10 Days. 10 Stories. Part 10–2019
From rock bottom to head above water. You know that feeling when your car runs out of fuel and you have to push it to the gas station. Uphill. A hard road. And a most rewarding road. Game on. I found the first gas station and am still driving.
Don’t you know I’m still standing better than I ever did
Looking like a true survivor, feeling like a little kid
I’m still standing after all this time
Picking up the pieces of my life without you on my mind
Here we are. It is 16th December 2019. fieldcloud is celebrating its 10th birthday today. The celebration is the delighted customers, the hard work, the sacrifices, the lessons learned and relentless spirit of never giving up. We’ve designed new hardware, mastered new embedded software architectures, integrated 3rd party cloud platforms, made new partnerships and built deeper client relationships.
What was the biggest shift? Building the company back up again from a local & regional customer base. Start in your own backyard. Even if you don’t ‘fit in’ because you weren’t born here or speak the language like a native speaker.
End of January 2019 was the second edition of Festival Transfo. We spoke at panel discussion about Agile methods for Edge Computing & Artificial Intelligence hosted by our partner Hewlett Packard Enterprise.
fieldcloud hosted a mini-event at the Grenoble Chamber of Commerce to raise awareness about the Smart Africa Smart Villages initiative in Niger.
Meanwhile, it was full steam ahead for our major IoT project for an industrial customer, designing a new hardware device based on an OEM microcontroller module from Pycom and an LTE-M/NB-IoT/GPRS modem from uBlox. We worked closely with our partners, Michael Kelly (PI2Design in Providence, Rhode Island USA) and ACJ Electronic (Villard Bonnot, France — closer to home!) and built the first custom PCB prototypes in March 2019.
Real Industrial IoT hardware, for a real Industrial IoT application. fieldcloud’s mission was crystal clear and we haven’t looked back. This is what we do and do pretty damn well!
The joy of booting a brand new device for the first time was incredible. What was even better was flashing the stock manufacturer’s firmware with our own customized version, containing our own device drivers and system libraries.
Developing embedded software using a brand new approach (mix of compiled libraries and Micropython scripting) was a super challenge and opportunity to show a fresh approach to build dynamic, reconfigurable edge processing applications.
In April we attended the 5th edition of SIdO in Lyon, no stand just a visitor this time. There was no cash to burn and priorities were different this year. It was good to meet up with our existing partner Hewlett Packard Enterprise again.
We also met up with SoftwareAG who we had got to know via one of our industrial clients. There was a good fit and appetite to work together. In June 2019 fieldcloud became an official systems integration partner for SoftwareAG’s Industrial IoT platform Cumulocity. We haven’t looked back since and have been co-selling and doing referral business development since we signed that partnership agreement. Sometimes you have run with the opportunity!
Another partnership was also put in place with French mobile operator SFR to explore joint go to market opportunities for NB-IoT connectivity. We’ve done some interesting demos using the NB-IoT network and Pycom-based Micropython applications.
In July 2019 it was time to head off to Niger again for the very first Innovation for Development (I4DEV) conference held during the African Union Summit in Niamey. It was brilliant opportunity to reconnect with old friends and make new ones.
The trip kicked off with a startup hackathon called HACK4DEV, all about financial inclusion in rural areas. Great topic.
The following day we had a outdoor session in the village of Sadoré to discuss Smart Village pilot projects with local and international stakeholders. This session was organized by the ITU-D. Proud that fieldcloud could have play a part in this exciting initiative for sustainable development.
Time for the main I4DEV event in Niamey. fieldcloud ran a joint stand with our local partner, Novatech a Nigerien systems & network integrator doing really cool work with voice driven rural inclusion applications for villages.
I4DEV saw the launch of Codeloccol a brand new unschool for developers modelled after initiatives like 42 in Paris. Those t-shirts below for the brand launch we made in Grenoble! I was asked by my friend Rouffahi Koabo CEO of CIPMEN (the Nigerien national startup incubator) if I could help out and keep a secret — we wanted to make sure that the new brand was a complete surprise at the event. It was!
The winners of HACK4DEV got to hang out and show off their prize during the event. It was humbling to be amongst such talented and motivated young people, hungry for experience and grabbing their own opportunities!
The joint Novatech/fieldcloud stand at I4DEV.
Our special guest from the January Festival Transfo Smart Villages mini-event, Sofie Blakstad (go read her book about the Fintech Revolution and social inclusion!) was in town to launch eArziki the first distributed ledger, digital village savings & loans platform in the world.
Last activity in Niger was an IoT embedded systems workshop for the Niamey Google Developer Group. This was really cool and we went quite deep into embedded application design & network integration topics.
Totally humbled to have met these young developers and engineers who are building tomorrow's solutions for sustainable development in Niger.
I recorded a wrap up video at the end of my stay in Niger. We can learn so much about human society in Africa and how we can best leverage the power and the responsibilities of digital technology to enhance the human experience, not diminish it.
Back in Grenoble it was time to build the 3rd generation of IoTEdge for our client. We had incorporate feedback from the 1st and 2nd generation prototypes and were converging on a solid physical package and application stack. We also started work with new clients on IoT applications, one a large chemical manufacturer, the other an SME focused on embedded electronic systems for vehicle diagnostics, cranes and outdoor plant (front end loaders and lifting equipment).
November 2019 saw the 3rd edition of the Hult Prize at Grenoble Ecole de Management. Fantastic group of motivated students and judges. This event stimulates the brain and the soul. Grateful to give some of my experience back to mentor the next generation.
Last highlight of 2019 was December's Pycom Go Invent IoT workshop in Paris, co-organized with sponsors SigFox, Sequans, Semtech & Expressif Systems. We got to cement a solid partnership with Pycom, and are looking forward to more joint initiatives and perhaps even a series of Go Invent workshops across Africa as the next phase of capacity building kicks in 2020.
Thanks Fred & Bettina for building a vibrant, worldwide IoT developer community with Pycom and pushing the envelope for powerful, low power, reconfigurable, multi-network IoT devices.
I would personally like to thank everyone who has been involved in fieldcloud's journey so far. It has been a mad adventure since we launched end of 2009 and every single minute has counted towards who fieldcloud is today and how we will shape the future. Happy 10th birthday fieldcloud!
If you are curious, and would like to find out how fieldcloud can help your business leverage the power of edge computing, embedded IoT applications and smarter network connectivity then please contact us — info@fieldcloud.com, via LinkedIn or simply leave us a voice message on +33 9 77 19 99 33.
10 Days. 10 Stories. A special feature celebrating fieldcloud’s adventure over the last decade and how we became the company we are today.