Given the current economic conditions I really didn't know what to expect from the 2009 RFID Journal Live conference. Yes, attendance was down significantly...but so was the hype. In past years it seemed as if there was a concerted focus on a limited set of industry specific topics such as supply chain centric case/pallet tagging and item level tagging in the pharmaceutical industry. This year was more broad and pragmatic. The RFID industry is maturing...and this is a very good thing.
With a few notable exceptions most of the leading industry manufacturers were in attendance promoting their latest offerings. Among the hardware manufacturers there was a concerted effort to offer more for less. The best example of this was the release of the Motorola FX7400 fixed reader. The FX7400 includes the latest features in an efficient and less industrial package than the company's current line. This now provides an attractive alternative within the Motorola RFID product family that is roughly half the cost of the industry leading XR450.
Tag manufactures continued the theme albeit with a limited amount of innovation. One notable exception was Tego whose new 32 kilobyte tag is clearly an industry breakthrough. The aerospace centric ATA SPEC2000 application demonstration running on standard Motorola and Intermec handheld readers was impressive. With all due respect to the other candidates up for the "Best in Show" award, that Tego did not take the prize is truly disappointing.
RFID centric software providers and systems integrators are more solution focused and technology agnostic than previous years. Asset management applications made up the overwhelming majority of the solutions on display. Supply chain oriented "Slap &Ship" vendors were in short supply; a dramatic departure from just a few years ago. Enterprise software providers such as IBM and Microsoft had an expanded presence indicating they see the value RFID technologies can bring to their overall enterprise solution offerings.
Our primary mission in attending industry conferences is to meet with customers and other industry peers and gather the sort of insight that we can then share with our customers. Based on this years RFID Journal Live it is clear that RFID continues moving down the well worn path of technology adoption. This is good news for our customers and solution provider partners who continue to benefit through the pragmatic application of RFID technologies.