KiCon 2023 - Why Does DigiKey Promote KiCad?

In September of 2023, the second KiCon event (KiCad conference) took place in A Coruña, Spain. A gathering of PCB designers, including engineers, hobbyists, and KiCad software developers, met to learn, share, and collect ideas about KiCad’s features, issues, and plans for the future. (And a fantastic opportunity to practice my Spanish.) As a happy KiCad user, I loved attending the first KiCon event in Chicago (2019).

Many of those I met were eager to learn about DigiKey. They were also proud to share where they were from and how they used KiCad to develop products, gadgets, art, and sometimes all three at once. I met people from all over Europe, one from China, a few from Central America, and a handful from North America. Although I am no stranger to world travel, I love being reminded about how much we all have in common. It was great getting to meet those I had only previously known via Twitter/X.

There were presentations like, Generate Models the KiCad Way, How to benefit from tuning the Design Rules Check (DRC), Ways to add Art to your PCBs, a KiCad Developer discussion (very interesting), How to use designs and libraries from your existing EDA tool, and more.

A representative from PCBWay/NextPCB attended from China. He said they figure that there are over 200,000 KiCad users in China, and they are looking at organizing the first KiCon event there to better connect with that user base.

During the ‘round table panel’ with the developers. They offered many updates on what they were working on- issues being fixed and updates in the future. Afterward, they took questions from the audience. The developers wrote down ideas and suggestions from the users in the crowd both then, and at many times during the conference. With lower attendance, the opportunity to connect with each other faster was an unexpected bonus.

I found it surprising that a number of people in Europe said they often received their orders from DigiKey faster than from distributors within the EU.

‘But why KiCad?’

I was given the opportunity to address the attendees at the end of the first day; “Many of the parts are the same, regardless of the distributor you choose, yes? Then it boils down to the differences your distributor can provide. At DigiKey, we aim to help you find parts accurately and quickly. Then, get them to you accurately and quickly. We aim to find new ways to serve you- better than we have before. One way is to encourage costumers (new and existing) by investing in open-source EDA software so price is not a barrier to designing the PCBs that will hold your/our parts.” (Or something like that- I had no prepared message.)

This event was an amazing experience – a rare chance to meet our current and future customers, face-to-face. Many of whom I’d be tempted to call ‘friends’. Not a ‘normal’ conference- in a good way.