Jan 29, 2003Jan. 30, 2003 - The Auto-ID Center plans to hold an EPC Symposium from Sept. 15 to Sept. 17 at McCormick Place in Chicago. The aim is to formally launch the technology that the center has been developing since 1999.
"There has been tremendous interest in the Electronic Product Code and the related technologies we've developed," says Helen Duce, the center's European director. "We have been educating companies about its capabilities. But the symposium will give people a chance to get more in-depth information about both how the EPC Network works and how it can be used."
The EPC Network is designed to enable companies to look up information on products after reading an Electronic Product Code off of an RFID tag. With most of the development work done, the center is shifting its focus to encouraging adoption.
The center has been running a series of adoption forums with its alliance partners to talk about the benefits of the technology to specific industries. The center also plans to hold an invitation-only CEO forum in Boston on July 16. The goal is to educate CEOs directly.
The center will use the symposium to provide practical information to enable companies to begin adopting the technology. It will also try to use the gathering to encourage potential vendors to manufacture EPC-compliant tags, readers and the hardware and software needed to make the entire system work, according to Duce.
Details of the program have not been worked out, but the symposium will likely give the center's technology sponsors, such as Alien Technology, Matrics, ThingMagic and others, an opportunity to show of their EPC-compliant products.
