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From a Small Booth to Industry Leader: Andrew Longhurst Reflects on Embedded World’s Evolution

With more than a decade of experience attending Embedded World, Managing Director Andrew Longhurst has seen the event, and the industry, transform first-hand. Here, he reflects on what’s changed, what newcomers should know, and what he expects from next year’s show.

Looking back, what’s changed most about Embedded World over the years?

Andrew Longhurst: The scale of the event, without question. Embedded World is now a major international conference for embedded engineers. For us, it has evolved from a sales exercise when we first started, in a small booth on the edge of a hall. Now we have a major stand in a central location, and the show plays a very different role for us. We find there are many more partner meetings. In fact, Embedded World has effectively become two events: a “front of house,” where our engineers talk directly to customers, and a “back of house,” filled with back‑to‑back meetings with partners. It’s a unique opportunity to get everyone together in one place over a short period of time.

What advice would you give first-time attendees at Embedded World?

A.L: That’s an easy one, comfortable shoes. Embedded World spans five or six halls, and you’ll be on your feet all day.

But more seriously, plan your day. Go in with a list and make sure you prioritise your most important meetings and opportunities first, then work down from there. It’s almost impossible to see everything in a single day, so treat Embedded World as a two‑ or three‑day event if you can.

What’s changed in embedded safety and security, and how has WHIS adapted?

A.L: When we first started attending Embedded World, back in 2008 or 2009, safety maturity was very different. People would ask whether they really needed to comply with standards at all, whether a coding standard alone was enough. Over time, the industry has matured significantly. Today, there’s broad acceptance that safety requires a full lifecycle approach: requirements, design, verification, traceability, and the ability to prove compliance to third parties, certification bodies and customers.

We’re now seeing a similar evolution happening in security. It’s still relatively new, and many organisations are working out what security means for their systems. Safety and security are fundamentally different challenges. Safety is your system operating within a defined context, and focuses on ensuring the system transitions to a safe state if it moves outside that context. Whereas security involves a bad actor actively trying to pull your system into different modes and contexts to find weaknesses. There is no single “safe context” for security. You’re trying to detect unknowns within the system itself.

With that viewpoint, the emphasis is on detecting unknowns and understanding how security is applied across the system, particularly at the RTOS level. Companies are exploring how an RTOS can provide additional security mechanisms that strengthen their security case with customers. My expectation is that over the next year or two, we’ll see a far more mature and structured approach to security emerge, similar to what we already have in safety.

What are you looking forward to at next year’s show?

A.L: From our perspective, Embedded World is not a single event, it’s an ongoing annual cycle. What I’m looking forward to speaking with our partners again and seeing how the plans we discussed this year have played out in the market.

It’s a chance to assess what worked, what didn’t, and how we build on that momentum going forward.  That continuous loop of discussion, execution, and refinement is what makes Embedded World so valuable year after year.

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