Erin McDermott

A brilliant product typically owes a great deal to a whole cast of unsung heroes who don’t get the praise and appreciation they deserve for their hard work and smarts. It’s time that changed, writes Erin McDermott Many brilliant products only exist because of critical work done by ‘little guys’ in the development ecosystem. Yet suppliers, machine shop pros, line workers and hardware start-ups often get little credit, while the reputations (and egos) of giant-sized players continue to inflate.

Her latest project may not have gone as hoped, but Erin McDermott is taking some valuable lessons away from the demise of OddEngineer.com and remains committed to testing out her ideas in real-life experiments I failed – and here’s what I learned. My pilot project for OddEngineer.com ended on 26 May. It did not go as I hoped, but it did go as planned. This platform, for paying for one-hour appointments with niche engineering experts, was an experiment.

What are the tech trends for 2020 and the decade to come? Read on and watch the video for all the gadget goodness that catches a HW engineers’ eyes at CES 2020! This year’s show in Las Vegas expected over 170,000 attendees and took up literally millions of square feet of exhibit space. That’s a lot of ground for one enginerd to cover. Luckily, I was able to pull in more vantage points from some other hardware pros.