Wednesday, August 1, 2007

Good news or bad? There are a couple of good news / bad news items today. First, the FCC still has caved in to the oligopolistic cellular providers by holding most of the new wireless spectrum safe from competition. Although there was a small movement toward opening up competition. Most of the world just can't understand how far behind we are with that technology implementation. The other item is Rupert Murdoch's apparent take over of the Wall Street Journal. No one knows the eventual result of the Murdoch acquisition on the editorial integrity of the WSJ will be. Maybe nothing, we hope. 8:14:59 PM    comment []

Profibus Annual Meeting My presentation was using blogs and other new media for marketing purposes--citing Jim Cahill, Benson Hougland and PTO's own Carl Henning. Later Carl showed members some of the conversations going on among bloggers where he could defend the Profibus position. Blogging can be a powerful marketing communications tool when used along with all the tools available. 6:43:07 PM    comment []

Profibus Annual Meeting I'm in Phoenix at the PTO GAM (Profibus Trade Organization, general annual meeting). Glad to say almost no one walked out on my keynote address. The main purpose of this meeting is to inform members about the status of the protocol and marketing programs. Big news is that Profibus node count has passed 20,000,000. Well, actually, the news really is the growth curve, which is still good. As Executive Director Mike Bryant pointed out, the important thing is that use is becoming mainstream and suppliers should be making money on products. Still a lot of development work going on with the family of protocols, so watch for further developments. 5:32:00 PM    comment []