This posting will be uncharacteristically personal but I hope you find it relevant and interesting.

Earlier this week I had the honor of attending the 2012 AIDC Technical Institute at the Russ College of Engineering and Technology at Ohio University.

AIDC Technical Institute is a “train the trainers” symposium

The AIDC (Automatic Identification and Data Capture) Technical Institute is an intensive, week-long “train the trainers” session. The faculty are recognized experts in various technologies and applications, some of them pioneers and lions in the industry, others (like me) not so well known second generation people (like me) from small companies, others founders and leaders of major corporations such as Intermec and Symbol Technologies and world-class thinkers and inventors such As David Allais who created five barcode symbologies including Code 39, Interleaved Two of Five, Code 11, Code 93 and Code 49; Chuck Biss, the father of the QuickCheck® verifier and now Senior Director of AIDC Healthcare, GS1 Global Office; Paul Bergé who established Symbol Technologies International, the sales subsidiary in Europe, past chairman of AIDC 100 and current President of Axicon Auto ID LLC; and George Wright IV, Vice President, Consulting and Business Development at PIPS, Inc.

Attendees included professors and associate professors from colleges and universities across the nation and beyond, the US military and a significant population from GS1 representing affiliates in South Africa, Poland, Finland, Indonesia and Australia.

The AIDC Technical Institute, like the industry itself, gathers a global community

Besides the opportunity for me to brag about being there and associating myself with such an auspicious gathering, of what value is this to you? To inform you, if you didn’t already know, that AIDC technology is a dynamic, evolving technology in the hands of some deeply gifted and brilliant people who are leading the charge into the next century.

AIDC technology today includes barcoding and RFID, but every bit as important as the method by which data is captured is the manner in which that captured data is used. As Mike Ohanian , former CEO of Intermec said in his opening presentation, what is most important about AIDC is not how it works, but how it solves problems.

What is most important about AIDC is not the technology: it’s about the problems it solves

The laser and the internet have birthed a world of opportunities we have only begun to comprehend: global commerce, automated manufacturing, food and pharmaceutical security, the internet of things, just to name a few.

The father of barcoding, Joseph Woodland and his collaborator Bernard Silver received a patent for a circular printed mark, an early barcode that couldn’t yet be decoded because in 1949 we didn’t have the technology to read it.

The history of barcoding is documented in an excellent book, sadly now out of print,  Punched Cards to Bar Codes by Ben Nelson, another industry notable.

The bible on bar code technology is The Barcode Book by Rodger Palmer, available at Amazon.com—be sure to specify the 5^th Edition because this technology is changing so rapidly.

Why is this important to you? Because this is technology that touches every one of us in some way, many times every day, and impacts in some way how we live today and how we will live tomorrow; because this is a great technology and an exciting career for anybody looking for a place to learn and work and make a contribution; because this is changing not only the way business is done, but how the world will be fed, how we will be cared for, and how secure we will be in the foreseeable future.

John Nachtrieb

John helps companies resolve current barcode problems and avoid future barcode problems to stabilize and secure their supply chain and strengthen their trading partner relationships.