On May 22, 2025, the Zephyr Project community came together for a lively in-person meetup in Medford, just outside Boston, hosted by Nordic Semiconductor at the Great American Beer Hall. With insightful talks, interactive demos, and networking, the evening brought together developers of all experience levels.
Welcome & Opening Remarks
The evening kicked off with a welcome note from Mariano Goluboff, FAE Director, Americas East at Nordic Semiconductor. Mariano highlighted Zephyr’s continued growth, the community’s global impact, and how meetups like these foster open collaboration across companies.
Zephyr Modularity: Demystifying Devicetree and KConfig, Noah Luskey, Owner, xv.engineering
Noah Luskey kicked off the evening’s talks by unpacking two of Zephyr’s most powerful, but often misunderstood components: Devicetree and KConfig. His session explored how Zephyr achieves modularity by cleanly separating hardware descriptions from application logic, allowing for scalable and flexible development across platforms.
He clarified the roles of Devicetree (used for hardware description) and KConfig (used for configuration management), and illustrated how they work in tandem to influence driver inclusion, dependency resolution, and the overall build process. For attendees navigating custom board support or complex build environments, the session was a welcome deep dive into the “magic” behind the scenes in Zephyr’s device driver model. Slides here.
Zephyr as a Secure Choice for Embedded Development, Theo Bardy, Software Engineer, Witekio
Theo Bardy wrapped up the evening with an in-depth look at security in embedded systems, and how Zephyr RTOS addresses growing concerns around cybersecurity, scalability, and compliance in IoT development.
Starting with the rising importance of embedded security, Theo provided an architectural overview of Zephyr and its native security features such as secure boot, memory protection, access controls, and kernel-level isolation. He also discussed Zephyr’s ability to integrate with hardware-based security mechanisms and support for industry certifications like PSA Certified and functional safety standards.
The session made a strong case for Zephyr as a future-proof, security-conscious RTOS, supported by a vibrant community and long-term maintenance roadmap. It resonated strongly with attendees working in regulated or high-risk domains. Slides here
Giveaways & Networking
The meetup wrapped up with a development kit giveaway courtesy of Nordic Semiconductor. A few lucky attendees walked away with some exciting hardware to continue exploring Zephyr at home.
During the networking time, attendees exchanged ideas, shared use cases, and even discussed future collaboration opportunities over snacks and drinks.
Thank You!
A big thank you to everyone who joined us in Boston and helped make the event a success. Special thanks to Nordic Semiconductor for hosting and supporting the meetup, and to all the speakers for sharing their time and expertise.
About the Community Meetups:
If you are excited about the Zephyr Project and want to share it with your local community, consider hosting an event in your city. Whether you are in Boston or halfway across the globe, we encourage passionate individuals to get involved.
Reach out to us and explore how you can bring Zephyr to your community and make a difference in the world of IoT development.
To keep up to date about the project, subscribe to the Zephyr quarterly newsletter or connect with us on @ZephyrIoT, Zephyr Project LinkedIn or the Zephyr Discord Channel to talk with community and TSC members.