RFID Lowdown

Alien’s Asian RFID Efforts

-- By Pushpa Sathish, Staff Writer

There’s been a lot of talk about the paucity of skilled workers in the RFID sphere, especially when it comes to walking an organization through all the stages of a deployment. The Alien Technology Corporation, which is attempting to fill in the gaps through its Alien RFID Academy, has now turned its sights on the Asian RFID picture. The RFID provider has set up Alien Technology Asia in the Incheon Free Economic Zone in South Korea to support and augment its distribution network across the continent and thus offer better service to its customers.

Come the New Year, and the people of Korea will be able to sign up for RFID training courses on offer at the Alien RFID Academy established as part of Alien Technology Asia by leveraging the u-IT Cluster Center facilities in Songdo Incheon City. Both fundamental and advanced practical courses relating to RFID implementations will be taught at the academy, which has already graduated more than 1,800 students.

Alien has earmarked $10 million for its Asian sojourn, to be spent on sales, distribution, marketing, R&D, and manufacturing costs.

RFID Training + Education Options Increasing

Of late, it appears that the number of radio frequency technology training options has boomed in just the past couple of weeks alone. Academia announced RFID training programs across Canada, IDTechEx is hosting a series of short masterclasses scheduled for Feb 2007, and the University of Kansas (KU) is offering 3 programs at three locations, Jan through Mar 2007 [via RFIDUpdate e-newsletter].

The KU courses include RFID: Deploying Your Item-Level Tracking (Jan 22-24, 2007, Kansas), RFID in the Cold Chain: Justifying and Deploying Your Cold Chain Solution (Feb 8-9, 2007, Las Vegas, NV), RFID for Intelligent Asset Management (Feb 28 - Mar 2, 2007, Kansas City, Mo).

These courses and workshops are a blessing as both technologists and end users are encompassed. With the expected shortage of skilled workers in RFID, training programs go a long way towards alleviating that lack.