I attended the 2015 DCC in Arlington Heights, Illinois, on Friday and Saturday, October 10th and 11th. It was held at the Double Tree by Hilton Chicago - Arlington Heights. The staff was friendly and helpful. Except for getting caught in two traffic jams due to accidents on the way back home on both days, the trip was flawless.
As for the technical information presented, it was a set of 45-minute speeches on projects completed or underway. The conference was very informative about the current developments in digital communication. It took me two days for anyone to admit at this conference that digital communication was actually interpreting analog signals.
Highlights included a gentleman from Hungary (Zoltan Doczi, and András Retzler) that was working on a project using a basic Raspberry Pi to track RF signals in the European countries. Although his speech had me loose focus for the first time during the conference because English was not his primary language, he was able to explain to me his project efficiently one-on-one. Afterwards, I thought how impressed I was because I thought how I would be received in his country speaking his language about one of my projects...by far, he would win that contest.
Another theme this years at the DCC was emphasis on two main topics. The first being software radios, presented by a gentleman from Berkeley. The other was SDR, DSP, and other digital radio developments presented by a team of developers and salesman from a Texas based radio firm.
Our team of four students led by our Professor, Dan White, Ph.D., attended the conference to introduce SatNOGS to the attendees of DCC. Professor White had felt the the attendees would be a good target base to get interested in the SatNOGS project and he was correct. After each day on technical presentations, the demonstration room was open for interaction among the attendees. The first day, we had a couple interested attendees. but after Professor White's presentation on Saturday, our booth was the most active at the DCC. Unfortunately, I was not in the picture of the students used in his presentation so I was not approached to answer any questions, but the other three students were bombarded with questions at our booth. One student even received an inquiry about a possible job offer or internship from Texas based radio firm (FlexRadio Systems).
In summary, I would like to thank all who arranged the DCC because it was very enjoyable. The went far and beyond to accommodate me as a wheelchair user. The facility was handicap accessible and they even supplied my personal attendant with a complementary ticket to attend.
Tom Biedron
KD9DFF
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