Apr/30/13



Hey there, Kevin here. As always, things are buzzing at Electric Imp so let’s get right to it!

Bring On Maker Faire

It’s hard to believe it’s been a whole year since the imp made its first public appearance, but apparently it has, and Electric Imp is excitedly looking forward to once again participating in the Bay Area Maker Faire on the weekend of May 18th and 19th in San Mateo, California. Most of the imp team will be there so swing by our booth and say hello if you attend that weekend. We would love to meet you!

Live from New York!

Hugo, Brandon, Tom and I recently traveled to New York to meet up with our good friends at Quirky and participate in the first ever Wink: Instantly Connected product evaluation. Quirky and GE are partnering to crowdsource the development of a new line of Internet-enabled consumer products, and we were there to judge which ones get made. Electric Imp will serve as the connectivity backbone of any device created through the Wink: Instantly Connected initiative. A selection of the products will be available in stores by the 2013 holiday season.

On the evaluation panel, Hugo and I joined Quirky’s Ben Kaufman, GE’s Brad Irvine, Bill Kernick and Linda Boff, as well as Josh Rubin from CoolHunting and Undercurrent’s Aaron Dignan.

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Two-plus hours and a lot of fun and lively discussion later, we crowned 17 new Quirky inventors and greenlit an eclectic assortment of product submissions ranging from a combination pollen counter and air purifier to an app-enabled baby formula maker and floor mat alarm clock.

Don’t forget: if you’re building something cool with the imp you should think about submitting it for consideration in the next Wink: Instantly Connected product evaluation on May 21st.

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While at Quirky HQ, we also spent time with Ben and members of this team to iterate on ideas around the Electric Imp platform and how device inventors can utilize it to the fullest.

We’ll continue to keep you updated on all the great things that come out of our collaboration with Quirky.

The Imps Continue to Multiply

The Electric Imp team keeps growing, and you can learn a little about our newest team members below. As always, if you’re interested in impifying your life and joining us on our journey, take a look at the various open roles. We look forward to hearing from you!

Matt Haines, Developer Relations Manager, comes to Electric Imp from the wintery reaches of Canada. Matt had been playing with the Electric Imp for a couple of months, and was a big cheerleader of ours when he visited our website to get some help. On the homepage he saw the promo that said, “You Should Work Here” and thought, “Yes, I should!” – so here he is.

Before arriving at Electric Imp, Matt was a project manager at iQmetrix and president of the CrashBang Labs’ board, a makerspace he helped found in his hometown Regina, Saskatchewan. He typically spends his free time teaching people how to make LEDs blink, playing with new web technologies, and climbing on rocks and other things.

Matt is still formulating what his “ideal” imp-enabled device would be, but he feels it should help people communicate – and it should be pretty. That or an Internet-connected espresso machine. That would be nice too.

Andrew Houghton, Software Engineer, joins the Electric Imp revolution from Beats Music, where he was CTO. Andrew has also held roles as Director of Engineering, Senior Engineer, and Platform Architect. Surprisingly, he was an English major at Carnegie Mellon but gives the school high praise for turning out English majors who can code.

Andrew sees Electric Imp as a chance to play with cool toys at the center of an amazingly inspirational and creative space. Whatever form it takes, he is confident that the Internet of Things is going to be huge, and is excited to help scale and support it with a great team.

Oliver Hutaff, CFO, brings 17 years of corporate and operational financial management to Electric Imp. Most recently, Oliver was CFO at Roku, Inc. He was honored as 2012 CFO of the year by the San Jose/Silicon Valley Business Journal.

In joining Electric Imp, Oliver saw a great opportunity to work with an extremely talented team who have built an amazing product that has the potential to make the lives of people easier on a global scale.

The first product that Oliver would like to see imp-enabled is one for his parents. Both of his parents have a very hard time hearing, so Oliver would welcome a device that enables him to turn on a bright flashing light in their house to alert them that he’s telephoning.

Aron Steg, Developer Operations Manager, owned a small business for 15 years in Australia focusing on mobile messaging and commerce. While consulting on a hardware project he needed a connectivity solution and nothing came close to Electric Imp. He couldn’t buy the company so he joined it.

At Electric Imp, Aron is happily working on the Budweiser Red Lights, writing firmware and server software for customers and reference designs, and testing the limits of the technology.

And that’s a wrap!

We’ve got plenty of news in store for the next few months, and we’re incredibly excited to see as many Bay Area peeps as possible at Maker Faire. We’ll be sharing more about our Maker Faire plans and booth location in the next week or so, and the best way to get the very latest info is to follow us on Twitter.