For engineers and developers who make use of the executive summaries of reports to get the gist of any technology or trend, the Keynote and Industry addresses coming up at the Fall Embedded Systems Conference in Boston, Sept. 21 to 23, will be a good way to get up to speed on general trends in the industry.

In summary form, they will provide a high level guide to product and technology development and then to the design strategies you must take to guarantee its success in the market place.

In his conference keynote speech on Wednesday, September 23, in his T.J. Rodgers, CEO and president of Cypress Semiconductor will provide his hard-nosed views on product design and development based on the experience of his company on such products as its flagship programmable SoC.

Complementing T.J.'s perspective is co-keynoter Robert Brunner, CEO of Ammunition. He is a renowned industrial designer of such product lines as the Apple II, MacIntosh, Newton and Powerbook. He will speak on Tuesday September 22.

If that is not enough, and you have a few more hours available, there are two Industry Addresses focused on more specific product segments from Kevin Dallas, general manager of Windows Embedded at Microsoft and Glen Hawk, vice president and general manager of the embedded business group at Numonyx.

In his talk "Delivering Compelling Devices," Dallas will make the point that it is no longer enough to just deliver a good device on time. " In today's economy you have to deliver great devices that clearly stand out from the competition and compel a purchase," he says. This means delivering devices that seamlessly connect to and can be managed by a trusted network of servers and directory infrastructure.

In "Memory Matters: Taking time and complexity out of the embedded design cycle," Hawk will emphasize that making smart choices on memory design can have a big impact on time to market and can help designers meet the increasing demand to deliver new, innovative devices more quickly and efficiently.