[foxboro] Fear and Loathing on the I/A trail.
- From: "David Johnson" <davidrjohnson@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: foxboro@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2007 18:12:49 -0500
Greetings Foxboro Users from the Marriott at Copley Place, it's the 2007 I/A
User's Group Roundup.
If you leave your towel on the rack it means you'll use it again.
If you leave your towel on the floor it means replace it.
And if you leave your towel in your cardboard suitcase it means you're from
West Virginia.
Sorry Mrs. Snodgrass, just kidding.
Ok gang here's the rundown.
I got in last night and got to go to the demo area. About what you would
expect, not a lot of new new stuff, but the latest offerings seem to be
maturing, and that means a lot of version 1.1 items on the demo floor. The
general feeling is that they (Invensys) is starting to get a lot of the
kinks worked out of the latest round of hardware and software. That feeling
may change as the conference goes on, but I think that captures the mood.
Then we had the welcome reception (beer). Entertainment was a high school
group from the school of performing arts. These kids were incredibly
talented. I mean they did two full sets of live music with choreography.
Their talent was great, but boy did it make me feel old to hear high
schoolers signing songs from when I was in junior high. Areosmith, Queen &
Abba. (And no Freddie Mercury wasn't gay, that was an act so he didn't have
to pay taxes in England.)
Several beers later and
Monday Morning....
We started the day with Mr. Terry Deo welcoming us back to Boston. And it's
good to be back, more Foxboro people here than we get in Texas, so that's a
good thing.
Then Betty Naylor-McDevitt-Smith-Jones-Thorsby turned things over to
Thad Frost, for the overview.
Let's see, I/A Turned 20 in April, and they mentioned the continuously
current commitment that they have with I/A.
They have a few things on the calendar.
Solaris on the mesh will be out on 9/22
Solaris 10 may (or may not) be the last version of Solaris with I/A.
(Anybody wanna make a bet?)
Infusion 1.1 is out and might I say looks pretty good.
New DCI blocks with alarming are supposed to be in the 8.3 release of I/A
They are adding a FBM225 Servo Controller for all you gear heads out there.
And a bunch of other minor, but needed updates to the product will be rolled
out later this year.
Then Peter Martin.
It's the same story, but now Peter is working from the engineer up as well
as the CEO down. I'll sum it all up.
1. Pity the poor CEO, he has it tough and might get the ax.
2. Engineers have value they too might get the ax.
3. You (the engineer) have to prove your value to the CEO using a language
he understands. (small words....very small words.)
Of course Peter is right, so you guys go into the CEOs office and tell him
you're mad as hell and you're not going to take it anymore.
(Or call Peter and he'll do it for you.)
Next up was Grant LeSeur giving us steps to take to be InFusion ready.
Pretty good content, and I have a lot of notes, but don't want to get all of
that in here now. Better than the usual sales pitch, because he did have a
roadmap that we can use to be working toward the future.
Then it was breakout sessions....
I went to the InFusion EEC tutorial. I was pleasantly surprised to see that
it does as much as well as it does. We asked them to do a few odds and ends
with the product outside the normal tutorial, and not only did the
instructor, Jay Godleski, know how to do it, he did it, and it worked, and
it even seemed to make sense to someone like me seeing it for the slightly
more than first time. So score one for InFusion's EEC. It may not be
great, but then again it might. It certainly shows a lot of potential.
Then it was brainstorming new directions with Betty.
Since Alex Johnson isn't here, and Winston isn't here, and Duc isn't here
(yet oddly enough attendance is very good) I shifted all new development to
Linux. My evil plan came to fruition and there was much rejoicing.
That's all for now kids....
Stay tuned.
David
--
"For my next trick I'll need a volunteer."
_______________________________________________________________________
This mailing list is neither sponsored nor endorsed by Invensys Process
Systems (formerly The Foxboro Company). Use the info you obtain here at
your own risks. Read http://www.thecassandraproject.org/disclaimer.html
foxboro mailing list: //www.freelists.org/list/foxboro
to subscribe: mailto:foxboro-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx?subject=join
to unsubscribe: mailto:foxboro-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx?subject=leave
Other related posts:
- » [foxboro] Fear and Loathing on the I/A trail.
