Last week I attended IoT Evolution, one of the OG major conferences focused on the data economy. IoT-E historically has drawn participation from wireless, electronic hardware, IT and managed services industries. This year saw an influx of new players in AI, analytics, upstream value creators and use case practitioners.
I was invited to present insights in three different sessions during the three-day conference. My areas of focus were how IoT and real-time data are positively impacting emergency response and public safety, clinical intelligence and smart agriculture. I’ll summarize what I shared and learned from others in each of these areas, plus give some other key takeaways from the show.
A significant driver of technology adoption by First Responders is related to increased situational awareness and speed to response. You may recall that the terrorist attacks on 9/11 crashed the telecom grid, making radio communications nonexistent. From this learning, the federal government created FirstNet, which is a slice of 4G LTE radio spectrum that is now dedicated to emergency communications in times of disaster.
That principle has been carried forward into many systems and subsystems related to emergency response. For example, in Cary, the traffic management system is architected to manage traffic signals to improve the speed at which first responders’ trucks and ambulances can transit the city. When there are lives at stake, emergency vehicles automatically get green lights all the way to the incident or to the hospital. Not only does this improve the incident probability of success, it also minimizes ancillary issues with pedestrian and vehicle safety for those in the path of transit.
The promise of the data economy has always been that we can capture and transmit real-time data (vehicle location) to automate a response (turn the traffic signal green) to solve a problem (save lives). We will see this core pattern in other industry examples below.
It’s hard to find anyone who doesn’t believe the complex healthcare system is a mess. There are countless areas for improvement. And some of the biggest areas of improvement are related to data resolution and data fusion. Let’s look at each.
For many of us, we make health and lifestyle decisions based on just one or two data points annually, at an annual physical. Whatever our blood pressure or blood sugar level was at that short, specific moment of the appointment is presumed to be our steady-state health measure every moment of every day.
Of course this isn’t actually true. Wearables and low-cost sensors are enabling us to capture far more data, and in-real time, giving far more resolution to our picture of health.
And physicians are benefitting tremendously from AI and automation to spend more of their time at the top of their license, not wasting it on lower-level tasks.
Perhaps most impactful right now, we see a proliferation of natural language processing tools that can capture our doctors visits and automatically update electronic health records (EHR). Doctors spend countless hours transcribing their appointment notes into an EHR post-appointment. That time can be recaptured now with automation. Will we one day soon see real-time data (captured from wearable devices) automate a response (update our EHR and alert our doctor if there is an anomaly) to solve a problem (change the paradigm from health triage to wellness management)?
In this session, I was joined by Gabriel Coch, the founder of Agro Patterns, a technology startup from here in the Triangle. We discussed the transformation happening across the agriculture sector.
First some background on Agro Patterns. Gabe works with flower growers, predominantly in Columbia, that grow roses and carnations and other flowers that are closely associated with holidays like Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day.
Nearly 40% of the entire annual production of roses is for Valentine’s Day alone. That puts extremely high pressure on growers to have the flowers bloom at exactly the right time and to harvest them at exactly the right moment, so that as they ship from South America to the US, they’ll be at peak on the exact right day.
Agriculture at scale is manufacturing. And IoT and AI are finally providing the tools to this sector that have been utilized in traditional manufacturing for decades. What is unique about agricultural manufacturing, however, is that all of your products are unique. Unlike repeatedly building cars or electronics or furniture, which have high precision repeatability of every component, every plant and every cow or pig or chicken is uniquely different.
Using Agro Patterns as an example, they manage this complexity even in rural areas that don’t have broadband connectivity or a technology workforce by putting simple tech, like phones or tablets into the hands of greenhouse workers, who can walk rows of plants and make a note of where they see a pest or an under-developing plant. The tablets automatically map and analyze locally, and once they are brought back to an urban area at the end of the day, transmit data back to the cloud. A plan response returns with precision fertilization and pest treatment — which saves growers significantly on the cost side (pest treatment accounts for 40% of the cost of roses).
Flowers only grow within a specific temperature range, arresting development when too cold and dying when too hot. With precise measurement of temperature, AI can project exactly how far along a growth cycle a plant has progressed and provide specific direction on watering, fertilization and temperature control to manage the plant optimally. Real-time data (pests and growth conditions) automates a response (water/fertilizer/light/temperature) to solve a problem (peak bloom on February 14).
● Australia is a country to watch. The major energy producers in Australia informed the government that the traditional energy chain: Power plant → Transmission lines → Distribution sub-stations → Users is no longer sustainable. The entire country is a few years into a decade-long transition over to microgrids. Instead of a few power plants supplying electricity across the country, there will be thousands of smaller points of generation supporting hyperlocal and regional rural needs.
● New York City proposed regulations to require new real estate developments to include EV charging infrastructure. The major power plants did the math and said, “We can’t support the future demand all those cars would represent.” The regulations went through anyway. Market forces win, and people are buying electric vehicles at an increasing pace. It remains to be seen how the impasse is resolved.
● All three major cellular carriers were at the show. Due to lack of competition, cellular communications are essentially commoditized at this point, and the boost in sales from 4G to 5G has mostly transpired. NB-IoT has largely flopped (AT&T announced last year they’re getting out of NB). There is absolutely no consensus as to what 6G will entail save that even a spec is probably a decade away. So cellular carriers are desperate to find new stories to market around. Two are apparent.
● Growth of fixed wireless access. This is essentially the provision of dedicated wireless connectivity between a facility and a cell tower, as an alternative to (or redundancy to) tranching a fiber optic cable from the tower to facility. All carriers are noting major growth of FWA. I suspect they hope this will also lead to growth of private 5G networks, but as I’ve written previously, that concept also has largely flopped.
● More significantly, I think, the carriers are all making satellite provider partnerships. LEO and GEO over mobile phones and IoT modules will be a growth market. Cellular providers want the additional functionality to expand their markets. Satellite providers benefit from increased data traffic revenue without having to manufacture hardware devices.
● I joined an interesting talk given by Mike Bergman, the VP of technology & standards for the Consumer Technology Association. CTA is involved in many interoperability, system and security standards for the tech sector (and also produces the Consumer Electronics Show). Mike shared interesting industry data and future work.
● The US Cyber Trust mark, initiated by the Biden administration, appears to be one initiative that will survive in the Trump administration. This is a good thing. This regulation requires device manufacturers to secure 3rd party validation of core cybersecure best practice implementations. This will be an ANSI standard and we’ll see implementation by the end of this year or early 2026. UL is leading on the certification side. Soon we’ll see products labeled with the new Cyber Trust mark and will include a QR code that links to real-time, updated security specifications and implementation details over the life of the product.
● A great deal of work is focussed on post-quantum security. Everyone agrees that soon, a quantum computer will be able to surpass industry standard encryption. So what should we do about it? There are two core problems. Most focus has been on the future, when data might be decrypted in real time by quantum tools. But there is an additional new worry about capturing encrypted data now, and holding it to decrypt later, once the tools are available. That’s a scenario that hasn’t gotten much attention. Here’s to hoping creative solutions emerge before we hit quantum zero day.
● While IoT Evolution was productive and informative, I was struck by how few younger companies and younger participants were in attendance. All the big players – Google, Microsoft, Verizon, etc — were there. But there were not as many early-stage ventures as in past years. One exception – I was pleasantly surprised to run into several RIoT accelerator and partner alumni at the event, including Device Solutions, Agro Patterns, TagoIO and TechGrid (previously branded Securedge Networks)
● I attended sessions across about a dozen different market verticals. By a wide margin, the highest attended session was the Smart Agriculture session I outlined above. What is even more notable is that this session was one of the very last sessions on the last day of the event, when a large percentage of attendees have already departed for the airport and home. I expected a skeleton audience and instead we had a packed room. Ag may be the hottest market for IoT right now.
● As I spoke with other attendees, I sense that in 2025, people are shifting their conference focus from attending events that cover technology horizontals like IoT Evolution, to instead attend industry vertical events. The concern is that the horizontal conferences are drawing too many tech providers and not enough tech practitioners. Too many attendees are selling and not enough buying.
My final parting thought relates to the bullet above. Despite a flight delay getting home, I was able to land in time to get out to last Thursday’s Triangle Tech Night event at the Junction in Chapel Hill. TTN is a local meetup organizer, bringing together industry, startups, investors, students, researchers and other stakeholders in the local tech economy. Their event focused on a vertical – Technology and Equity in Healthcare – and drew an enthusiastic audience.
I was excited to get an update from Neal Shah, founder and CEO of CareYaya, one of the fastest growing startups in the healthcare space (and another RIoT alum). But the event also included voices from big healthcare brands and nonprofits alongside local startups. The quality of this local event surpassed any single session I saw at the major conference. I’ll keep attending the big shows and report what I learn in this column. But I encourage everyone reading to get out on the local circuit. The quality of discussion is through the roof.
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