Friday, May 2, 2008

Grinding sausage I'm briefly at the Cleveland Hopkins Airport on my way home from Texas. No travels next week as I try to find more referees for the Sidney Mayfest Soccer Tournament. We visited National Instruments yesterday. Bunch of meetings and a nice dinner at Manuels. Brian Betts talked about wireless. NI has been an Ethernet user for a long time--it's a commercial technology that can be adapted easily to instrumentation and control, and that's the NI sweet spot. So, for wireless, its engineers are watching the WirelessHart and ISA100 proceedings closely. Real development and potential products are advancing for 802.11 (wireless Ethernet or WiFi). Brian discussed things I should watch for as more of this comes out. Joel Shapiro came by to discuss green engineering and where NI is going with that issue. I included a story from Nucor Steel and its NI connection in my March article on green. We're working on another great customer story for James Koelsch's piece coming up in July. Had a great demo on a new product that won't be announced for a few weeks. When it does, I'm all over it. I was really enthused by it. Did breakfast and some work in the breakfast room of the hotel yesterday morning with the ubiquitous CNN droning on. Another reason I (almost) never watch TV news (or spend much time with MSM - mainstream media). For some reason all those outlets thrive on negative news. Must be that the lowest common denominator viewer revels in other people's misery and like to believe the worst is happening. So, all the MSM is really hyping that we're in a recession. Oops, they had to report that the GDP actually went UP last quarter. We're in a recession when the GDP goes DOWN for TWO straight quarters. We haven't gone down, yet. But the streamer on CNN said, "GDP went up .6% so we're technically not in a recession." Note that little word "technically." Journalists (or their publisher bosses) love those little words that spread innuendo without being "technically" inaccurate. I just hate that. They should have just said that the GDP went up. That would have been fair reporting. We have to watch that sort of stuff in our reporting in this industry, too. I've been on standards committees in my life--even chaired one. Have the arrowhead marks in my back to prove it :-)  Anyway, what they say about making sausage is true of standards bodies--you don't want to watch them make it. The ISA100 committee is conducting a couple of debates via its email list which is pretty open. I'd prefer not to discuss all that meat grinding going on. But I have heard one source who sees the partially complete debates and is worried about the sky falling. Tell you what. There will be a standard, it will reference WirelessHart, and companies will build products to it. This will not happen until 2009. So as we used to say when I was a kid, don't get your undies in a bunch. Let the experts pound it out--then go ahead and implement WirelessHart where you need to get information inexpensively to better operate your plants. By the end of the year, you will have serious competitive choices for products. When ISA100 get through the grinder and into the casing with products on the market, I'm willing to bet that it won't be that hard to adapt to it. For now, there is a solution. Lots of people are behind it. Go for it--where it makes sense. 11:31:06 AM    comment []