Tag: Conferences (Page 2 of 2)

Geneva in 1 day and Framework Training

February 21, 2019 / rhapsody207 / 0 Comments

Introduction

I do not only do long haul flights to far-away countries. i also do day trips to destinations that are a bit closer.
This time I had to be in Geneva (also called Genève or Genf depending on your language..) There is a direct flight from Schiphol airport. An early one to Geneva and a late one back. So I booked and, for a change, I travelled light.

The Trip

It felt funny all day to hardly have luggage… I looked up multiple time in panic from the feeling something was missing… human habits… strange thing.
But it was a long day. I woke up at 5 to be in the 5:45 train to Schiphol. I always hear people complaining about trains being late and not arriving at all. I have to say that I never had trouble with that… Its the planes that give me trouble.. or the airports.. or the airline..

Being up that early had one advantage. The papers and the internet were talking since days about an event that was coming up: “The Superbloodwolfmoon” or something like that… The disadvantage was that you had to get up early to see it… and I was. It looked very nice, the picture was not as cool as I wanted but hey, it’s not a camera, it’s a phone!

So I was on Schiphol on time, without the need to check-in luggage I just walked on to the lounge. In exactly 2 hours from my own chair to the lounge chair. Not bad.
Flight went well, I picked up my rental car and picked up the colleagues that were also there to drive to the customer.
It was a short visit, convincing the customer was not difficult, i gave a quick demo of Rhapsody using the RXF (in C++) and the fantastic Target Debugger. That mostly impresses the s…t out of new customers, certainly if they have been using Rhapsody before.
So we were back in time at the airport, we could even drink a quick cup of coffee. Then the flight back was leaving. After arrival I took the train back and was at home at 23:15. A long day indeed.

Training

I am asked a lot about what people need to do to learn more about Rhapsody. Well that is very easy. Try to visit relevant congresses like the ESE in Germany, also the Embedded World where the famous Bruce Powel Douglass gives lectures about MBSE. Also our MESCONF, the Rhapsody User Group Meetings and the IBM IoT meetings are very recommended to visit, you will learn a lot about Rhapsody and have the opportunity to speak with lots of other Rhapsody users.

Also highly recommended are trainings. The basic training (Yes, even if you already have experience with Rhapsody but have acquired your knowledge by learning it by yourself: a training will improve your knowledge! (I did that myself. After 6 months Rhapsody and creating adapters I visited a Training given by Martin Stockl. I thought, well let’s visit that maybe I learned something new… I can tell you I have never learned so much as during that training….

We also have advanced trainings, about different subjects. Also we have partners, like Frank Braun from Evocean that give very interesting Trainings like the standard C++ Raspberry Pi Training and soon the Framework Training (9/10 April in Munich. That will boost your Rhapsody knowledge! (Is in the German language) You can apply directly on our website.

That was it! Happy modeling with Rhapsody!

Walter van der Heiden (wvdheiden@willert.de)

Back in Hyderabad, India

February 14, 2019 / rhapsody207 / 0 Comments

Introduction

Sorry, hardly time to write these days. We are having long days to use the week as effectively as possible. And then there is the time difference… If I am finally done working the US is just waking up and full of energy looking at projects.. My home city is preparing for dinner… But lets not complain. I will write more about India later, first I want to write something about the (near) future!

Embedded World

We are back at the Embedded World!! Yes finally. Not as big as before, we don’t see the point in having a huge booth anymore, a small one will do as well. We cooperate as before but now with OOSE (and with Sodius, of course)!
The Embedded World will be in the “Messe Nürnberg” from February 26-28. We are in Hall 4, Booth 4-150. We have Coffee….;-)

The motto will be:

EEE

(Engineering Efficiency Empowerment by seamless integration of Process, Methods and Tools)

The ability to collaborate across disciplines is the key success factor in product development. In today’s engineering processes we see a multitude of heterogeneous systems, which should fulfill the demand for integrated systems. We use requirements management tools, ALM / CLM / PLM solutions, modeling tools, department-specific tools, quality analyzers, just to name a few. All equipped with interfaces for integration or collaboration with other tools. Nevertheless, it is always a challenge to pass data loss-free from one discipline to the next. It is even more difficult when data is to be exchanged across company boundaries. Because often only a filtered subset of data is exchanged, or different standards or tool versions are maintained.

Willert, oose and Sodius cooperate with the objective to support you in the optimization of your processes and engineering methods and to ensure a valid data flow between the departments. Willert contributes its expertise in embedded and systems engineering. oose contributes its expertise in process and method consulting. And with SECollab, Sodius offers a tool for visualizing and processing engineering data from a wide variety of tools and disciplines.

Our Offer

On our booth on the Embedded World in Nürnberg we offer you a free, 30 minutes analysis and evaluation session of your current situation at our stand and give suggestions for improvement directly.

Use the expertise of Andreas Willert and Tim Weilkiens at our booth Hall 4 – 150 on 26. – 28.02. in Nuremberg. A maximum of 8 slots are available per day. If you want to be sure of getting a slot, make an appointment before the fair with Mrs. Willert: swillert@willert.de (Tell her I sent you…)

Of course I will be there to answer Rhapsody questions live!

We will gladly send you an admission voucher for the fair. (Sorry, the pictures are in german, they should be understandable. When I have the source I will translate them)

1st step: rough process definition

2nd step: Precise definition of the work steps

Our lectures in the forum at Embedded World (Hall 2 – Booth 510)

Efficiency in engineering through seamlessly integrated processes and tools

Andreas Willert and Tim Weilkiens in German – 26.02. / 11.30 – 28.02. / 11.00 clock

A consistent environment reduces the obstacles on the way of developing artifacts from idea to product. Organizational, methodical and technical process breaks require more effort and at the same time lead to information losses and increased risk. We will show you how to develop benefit-oriented process steps and how to derive and implement the necessary seamless integration of tools.

Modeling the “Standards” Way

Walter van der Heiden in English – 27.02. / 10:00

In various standards we can observe common themes of abstraction, specialization, refinement and relationship (traceability). Aligning the value of these standards and easing the adoption is the most effective way to improve and realize success in an organization. We have applied a SysML for Systems Engineering, AUTOSAR for Vehicle Design and Software Architecture, and UML for Software Design and Implementation. Using high quality UML tools and simply targeted bridges, engineers can focus on their designs and models for developing their solutions. We want to demonstrate SysML models that transition to AUTOSAR designs, that are moved to implementation designs (in UML or Simulink), and finally code generation. All the while maintaining simple bidirectional traceability and design artifacts demanded by ASPICE.

That’s it, Happy Modeling with Rhapsody!

Walter van der Heiden (wvdheiden@willert.de)

Shanghai AUTOSAR

November 10, 2018 / rhapsody207 / 1 Comment

Traveling

Last year the 10th AOC was in San Jose, this year the 11th was just as far but then in the other direction… in Shanghai

Also a first time, I’ve never been to China before. before we left there was already a bit of bad news: The Hard-Rock cafe in Shanghai just closed. Grrr.

Also acquiring a Visa was a bit troublesome… but I managed in time.

But OK, we had to work anyway. So on Sunday, me and a colleague left for Schiphol Airport (My Favorite) to fly to Xiamen and then to Shanghai. Almost 16 hours in total. The first flight took 10 1/2 hours, that is long… Somehow I did not manage to sleep so I was pretty tired after arrival.

Luckily the arrival was in the evening so after a shower and a meal we could quickly go to bed. Before that we managed to get some SIM cards so that we could be online in an affordable way. Also we tried an ATM and that worked! China uses

But soon we noticed that not everything is easy in China. Almost everything is blocked, Google, Facebook, Uber, WhatsApp and even Pokémon (Yes, yes….) Even many commercial VPN services don’t work.

Luckily I have my own VPN at home so I could have some communication with the home front. But it is definitely not as easy as we are used to now. And slow. And you get kicked out every now and then.

So if you travel to China:

* buy a SIM card from China Mobile (costs about €20 for a Month unlimited data)

* Optionally take a second cel phone (Or a WiFi 4G Router)

* Organize a VPN

* Download WeChat. Without WeChat you are lost in China. It is their WhatsApp and Facebook and ApplePay.

* If you go to China longer: go to ICBC and organize a Bank Account. You can link that to WeChat and use it to pay. They not always accept you as a customer but just try another one.

* No Uber but China has DiDi, get that!

The Conference

The Conference was 2 days, the first was a technical day with 2 parallel slots, one for Classic and one for Adaptive. My colleague and I decided to split up, I would do the Classic track, he the Adaptive.

It turned out to be the most interesting day, the next day was much more superficially from an information standpoint. At night was the networking reception, that is always very useful.

I changed my opinion about Adaptive AUTOSAR. My usual comment was: “Adaptive is like teenager sex, they all speak about it but nobody know how it works and nobody has done it”. I thought the use would be limited to infotainment and autonomous driving ECUs.

But I noticed that there is a trend towards centralization, like in the IT world. Not a bad idea, you create lots of intelligent sensors and actors and connect them to a powerful system that can control them.

Since most ECU’s are not “stand-alone” anyway but have to share tons of information with other ECU’s it is a good idea to combine all these systems.

Since the “intelligent” sensors and actuators will be still made with Classic AUTOSAR, there must be an AUTOSAR Classic inside the Adaptive.

We also learned a lot of other things like the communication (SOME/IP) and DDS, a systemwide publisher Subscriber (A bit like Da Boston Broker )

Back Home

It was a short visit, on Thursday we went back the same way we came. We got lucky, a free upgrade to Economy Plus. Unfortunately a large family (I think from one of the countries that used to be Yugoslavia) thought it was a good idea to put the entire family in Economy Plus, including their noisy kids. But we returned home safely!

I will be back in Shanghai in 2 weeks for the MESCONF.

That was it

happy modeling with Rhapsody

Walter van der Heiden (wvdheiden@willert.de)

MESCONF 2018

June 8, 2018 / rhapsody207 / 1 Comment

Introduction

As every year we have organized our MESCONF (Modeling of Embedded Systems CONFerence) We changed the format a little bit, this year we have extended it to 2 days, the first day is just like last year with the difference that we have an evening session, the second day is “Tool Vendor Day” to allow Tool vendors to do a more marketing focussed presentation of their tools

Again at the fantastic Infineon location in Munich we had 80 people there listening to various presentations of experts and later some Open Space sessions.

The evening session with Nicolas Dierks the Philosopher was really interesting and shines a new light on our lives as developers.

As usual we used “Open Space” to organize a big part of the MESCONF. Proven concept, since years we receive very good critics about it.

We spoke about lots of things that occupy modelers these days. One thing that returned in many meetings was the topic of “How to handle people who are refusing to model.”
A very interesting topic. Why are people refusing to model?

Some people just don’t get familiarized with modeling. Modeling is not easy, you need a lot of initial knowledge to apply it in the correct way. The only thing that helps there is train, train, train, coach..
Modeling is different from programming. Sometimes people who are real programming guru’s refuse to switch to modeling while they lose their “guru” status. It is difficult to discuss with them since they do not refuse consciously most of the time. they will use other arguments to refuse modeling and keep on doing what they do.
“Known hurts are better than unknown happiness”. A common attitude of most people is to stick to what they know until the hurt is really, really big. As long as people manage somehow to deliver their products using old methods they will stick to them.
“We don’t have time to repair the fence, we are busy catching chickens”. Most people are under stress and continue doing what they do because the stress does not allow them to step back and take the time to evaluate the used methods.

There is no “silver bullet” solution to that. The common feeling is that the world is leaning more and more towards modeling, partly because younger developers have less objections against it (Mostly they had it in school) and because the complexity is increasing faster. We also notice an increase in Rhapsody business. And that’s good!

OK, that’s it. Happy modeling with Rhapsody

Walter van der Heiden (wvdheiden@willert.de)

Think!

March 22, 2018 / rhapsody207 / 1 Comment

This is the week of the IBM Think! in Las Vegas. I actually hate Las Vegas, it is a very aggressive place to be for my poor Asperger brain. I already had some serious “Sensor Overload Errors” there. I prefer Florida but you can’t win them all. IBM wants me to go to Vegas…

Also the IBM Conferences get bigger and bigger every year. I loved the Innovate in Florida, not just because of Florida but also because it was much smaller. You could really find all the people you need. In LV it is almost impossible to meet somebody.

Luckily there is the German IoT Conference (and hopefully the US IoT Conference) I feel a lot more at home there.

At least “Think!” is a great name, thinking is generally a good idea.

Hyperlinks

To gather information in your model it is a good idea to use Hyperlinks. You can use hyperlinks to save links to:

model elements (Change the view of your elements)
websites (Compiler, CPU, Willert!)
documents on your disk (For use in the project)

For documentation it is better to use “controlled files”, they will be part of the model and can be transferred to others.

Package Hyperlinks are a bit hidden, you have to right-click on a package and select “Add New”, “Relations” , “Hyperlinks”. Don’t forget that a click on a hyperlink will not open the features but the target of the hyperlink.

Explorer Helper

I often search for my Model directory. Rhapsody does not always show it in the File Menu and you then have to open the configuration, go to the Settings Tab and look where the generated source is. There is a better way to do that.
Goto “Tools” “Customize” “Helpers…”.
Add a new item there, call it Explorer (or what you like) and fill in “explorer” at the command and “.” at the arguments.
This will give you a menu item under Tools that opens an explorer window with your project directory. Cool eh?

Happy Modeling with Rhapsody!

Walter van der Heiden ( wvdheiden@willert.de )

A380

November 6, 2017 / rhapsody207 / 0 Comments

I have spent a lot of my time in airplanes, certainly more than a whole month. That is a lot of time. I used to be afraid of flying due to an “unlucky” experience when flying from Austria back to Rotterdam.
That flight had everything, storm, and I mean a real serious storm, a broken of landing, emergency landing on another airport, crying flight attendants, not to mention the other passengers.
It took me a while to get over that but since the first US flight I don’t care anymore. Or better, I like flying. In spite of hundreds of flights, I still like it very much.

As said I’ve seen lots of different airplanes, Boeing 737, 747, 767, 777, 787, Airbus 319, 320, 330, 340 and the 380. Also Embraer, Fokker, Dash, Ilyushin, Bombardier and even some smaller ones.

But the A380 is something special. Very very silent and of course: Huge. And I mean, really huge. I’m an engineer, i know how planes fly but even I am wondering how something this size can just fly.

My Facebook timeline told me this morning that it was exactly 5 years ago since I went to India. The flight was via Dubai so I’ve flown with the A380 of Emirates from Schiphol to Dubai and back. I was already impressed that time.

This time i flew from Paris (CDG, the worst airport in the world) to Miami with Air France. But… Business Class (Yes!!!) So upper deck and a real lot of space.

So… back in the USA. After just a bit over 3 weeks…. This time I have an AUTOSAR conference in San Jose (November 7-8) and the IBM IoT CE Conference in New Orleans (November 14-17)

I will be speaking on both events and on November 17 we will have a Rhapsody Workshop.

I hope to see you there!

Happy modeling with Rhapsody

Walter van der Heiden ( wvdheiden@willert.de )

Engineering@Scale Tech Day

October 4, 2017 / rhapsody207 / 0 Comments

Join us for Engineering@Scale Tech Day. Learn how new solutions and technologies are helping to lead the innovation agenda while addressing the complexity challenge in the automotive industry.

This event will focus on engineering systems and software development. We will feature sessions around industry best practices and the core processes of requirements management, architecture design, collaboration, change and configuration management, test and quality management, product line engineering and variant management. Improve your skills, network and collaborate with industry experts.

What to expect:

Keynote session by the American Center for Mobility
Technical sessions for novices to experts, with topics ranging from:
- Scaling Agile to the Automotive Enterprise
- Convergence of MBSE and the Product Innovation Platform in Automotive
- Connected Product initiatives with Digital Twin and Digital Thread
- Improving your processes with Automotive SPICE
- Feature-based Product Line Engineering and Operations for the Automotive Enterprise
- Certifiable framework for AUTOSAR
- And more
Networking Lunch (no charge)
Plus, tour the spectacular automotive collection at the GM Heritage Center.

Register today and share with a colleague!

General Motors Heritage Center
6400 Center Drive
Sterling Heights, MI 48312

Thursday, October 12, 2017 from 8:00 AM to 4:00 PM (EDT)

Oktoberfest

September 19, 2017 / rhapsody207 / 0 Comments

This week starts in Munich. Or actually in Münster where I stay in a hotel to prevent having to go up at 4 o’clock. My flight to Munich leaves pretty early here, the Hotel is close to the airport and has a taxi service. Without large check-in luggage the check-in time here is about 10 minutes.

But enough about Münster, I’m on my way to Munich, not my favorite town as you might remember. Luckily I don’t have to drive..

The flight was hard enough to get since this is the time of the “Wies’n” as the Munich people call the “Oktoberfest”. Yes, correct, that is not in October… People from all over the world travel to Munich to have a look at the Oktoberfest. And I am invited by IBM on their IoT (Internet of Things) conference with a visit included.

I personally couldn’t care less, the music they play there is absolute horror, the noise is terrible and the only good thing is the Beer that they serve in large glasses that contain 1 whole liter (Mass), drink a few of them and you won’t notice the rest anymore…

Unfortunately I have a busy week and I’m on a diet so no beer for me. So I have to survive it cold-turkey.

Finding the right place was not easy, we had a description but the Oktoberfest place is huge.

There are positive sides, luckily. I meet with old friends from the pioneer Rhapsody days and that is really cool.

The conference was very good, we spoke with many people from IBM about the tools. Although IBM is breathing “IoT” to the outside world, this conference showed that they are still very much aware that there is no IoT without compelling tools!

There is a lot going on with Rhapsody and all Jazz tools, I will speak more about that later when things are released.

In the meantime: Happy Modeling with Rhapsody!

Walter van der Heiden (wvdheiden@willert.de)

RUGS & DUGS

July 1, 2017 / rhapsody207 / 0 Comments

On Tuesday June 27 we had our yearly RUGS&DUGS. That is the Doors and Rhapsody User Group Summit. Actually the correct abbreviation would be DRUGS. Is fine with me (i’m Dutch) but my German colleagues were against that name. Well OK… but acronyms ending in UGS are all problematic… well except Hugs I guess 😉 Check out RUGS/DUGS in google…

But the conference was successful despite the name, a lot of users were there. This year we were in München, not exactly my favourite city. Or to be precise: i hate Munich. Traffic is hell, public transportation sucks, hotel cost a fortune unless there is a fair then hotels cost more than a house in north Germany, the local soccer team are a bunch of tax criminals.

Enough about bad stuff, onto the good stuff. On our User Group Meetings (and also the MESConf we held the day before) we use something called “Open Space”. This is something that was invented by Harrison Owen and David Belisle. These guys organised conferences and in their evaluations they found out that most people liked the conversations they had during the breaks best. So they figured out a way to extend the conversations during breaks: cut the presentations and formalize the breaks.

There is a time/place plan that allows for multiple conversations to take place, participants determine the topics themselves, put them on a board on a specific time and place and others can, with a look on the board, determine what is interesting to go to.

Works like a charm, i’ve witnessed an Open Space conference a dozen times now and all were great. You can learn a lot in a short time.

More Info

This is one of the methods we use to spread our knowledge about MDSE/Rhapsody/Doors/etc. Other methods are:

this BLOG!

FaceBook

Twitter

IBM DeveloperWorks (Recommended!!!)

Rhapsody4You (please use Developerworks from now on!)

UMLforum (use Developerworks please!)

You see, enough possibilities to extend your knowledge and become an MDSE Pro real fast! About the forums: In close cooperation with IBM (Thanks Johan Adelgaard!!) we decided to concentrate all Rhapsody knowledge on the IBM site. You will need an IBM ID to login but that is totally free and takes 1 minute to set up.

The next UML Trainings are:

19. – 21.09.2017 in Stuttgart
14. – 16.11.2017 in Bückeburg

Happy Modeling with Rhapsody!

Walter van der Heiden, wvdheiden@willert.de

Tag: Conferences (Page 2 of 2)

Geneva in 1 day and Framework Training

Introduction

The Trip

Training

Back in Hyderabad, India

Introduction

Embedded World

EEE

(Engineering Efficiency Empowerment by seamless integration of Process, Methods and Tools)