Start of the never ending tour

Admittedly, the building block is the increasingly wide range of National Instruments products that can be used in test, design validation, system design, industrial control and monitoring and numerous other fundamental roles within the engineering sector. However, it is the applications that have become the focus of NI Week. It has become something of a celebration of innovation as NI itself has shifted the focus away from its own products and on to the engineers and scientists that use them. NI Week also marks the start of the global tour that is NI Days, the distilled and regionally focused version of the Week. The majority of the tour rifles through Europe in the autumn, stopping off in London on 20 November and continuing through to following spring. It then pauses for breath for a couple of months before NI Week 2014 sets the agenda for the following year. While it may not quite have the longevity of Bob Dylan's 'never ending tour' – which started in 1988 and continues to this day – it certainly maintains an intensity that only increases as time goes on. Now in its 19th year, NI Week will start to unveil the big announcements and headline projects tomorrow and I hope to bring you news of them in this column as the week progresses, assuming I don't wilt in the 40° plus temperatures!