Kathy Giori of Global Partnerships and Outreach, MicroBlocks

Rather than expose your smart home device data and voice commands “to the cloud” (i.e., to large tech titans as well as smart product manufacturers), this talk demonstrates how you can maintain better privacy over it. The secret is to run a local WebThings Gateway (the software is free and open source). It provides desirable privacy by not sending data nor commands outside your home, and it offers best-of-breed security using https (via any browser) for remote management, but only to you and your family.

Kathy will take you on a tour of her own smart home, and describe how easy it is to set up your own gateway. Then she will demonstrate the simplicity of MicroBlocks for building your own “smart devices”, such as motion sensors, temperature sensors, door/window sensors, pushbuttons, lights, and more.

Biography:

Kathy fills her desk with hardware, especially microcontroller boards that can be programmed using MicroBlocks, a learning tool for physical computing. While at Mozilla, she worked on the WebThings Project, which successfully launched a "gateway" software stack that can run on a Raspberry Pi, and act as a hub for a myriad of smart home and IoT devices. She currently promotes the advantages of MicroBlocks, including the ease with which you can build your own IoT devices that are compatible with the WebThings Gateway. Prior to Mozilla, she held senior roles at Arduino, Qualcomm Atheros, a few startups, and more. She has experience bridging open communities with industry to drive faster innovation. She is super keen on equity of access to all students across the globe to obtain a good STEM education. She received her bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Minnesota, and her master's in EE from Stanford University. When not at a computer, she can usually be found exploring the great outdoors of northern California.

Address:146 Library Drive, , Rochester, United States, 48309

Sharan Kalwani of IEEE SE Michigan

Biography:

Sharan Kalwani is an industry technology specialist with 25+ years of experience. Sharan has degrees in both Engineering and Computer Science. He has worked in many diverse areas. He is a sought after speaker at many a diverse conference and seminars, such as Supercomputing, HPC Advisory Council, SIAM, Infiniband Trade Association, etc. He has delivered several tutorials, workshops and chaired Birds-of-a-Feather (BoF) sessions. Sharan is a senior member of IEEE-Computer Society, IEEE-Education Society and Vehicle Tech Society, an Emeritus member of Michigan!UNIX/user group (mug.org) the oldest of the *nix user groups based in Michigan (they were first established in late 1985), member of Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and also leads the SIG-Linux section of SEMCO. He enjoys teaching, holds an Adjunct Faculty position at local educational sites. He has published one book "Linux and Internet Security" and is now working on his second about a new computer programming language. He is a recipient of the IEEE MGA Achievement award for his contributions to IEEE activities in 2018.

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