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Saturday, December 20, 2008 |
The Bush administration has decided to provide loans to GM and Chrysler to tide them over. Personally, I'm not ideological about this. I hate to see people thrown out of work (it's happened to me a few times in economic downturns when the company had the wrong product at the wrong time). But I hate to see bad management rewarded. If they are going to get money, and part of the stipulation is to screw the "little people" that is reduce wages, cut more jobs and take away retirement benefits that people were counting on, then I think Wagoner and his cohorts should all be tossed out too without golden parachutes and other trappings of aristocracy. [Note: I know three people drawing auto industry pensions. don't know what they'd do now if suddenly their income disappeared. at 85, one can't work. I suppose the other two would have to go to work. Since one is only 55, I suppose that's only fair.]
This does impact, indeed has already impacted, the automation industry. There just doesn't seem to be the momentum among the discrete automation suppliers that there is in process. Even among the discrete suppliers, the target customer is now machinery OEMs--primarily in markets such as packaging rather than automotive.
Here's a New York Times article about, among other things, how you can't cut your way to prosperity. And an essay from a writer in the Orange County Register about bailouts and other stupidity was recommended by John Dvorak. (and me)
3:36:15 PM 
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Talk of the demise of trade shows hit the 'net this week with the announcement that Apple CEO Steve Jobs would not give the keynote at Macworld this year. Macworld is a huge community gathering of the Apple faithful, but it is sponsored by IDG, not Apple. Instead, this year the keynote will be another Apple executive--a vice president in product marketing. Further, Apple announced that 2009 (January) will be the last one it attends with a booth and all the trappings.
I had a Twitter conversation with Erin Callopy about this--discussing that companies prefer the captive audience of private conferences, except for Pack Expo which evidently still has a thriving industry association.
The Silicon Alley Insider announced the world was coming to an end (well, sort of).
Noted tech blogger Robert Scoble wondered "Are bloggers & social networks killing big shows?" He has some interesting thoughts there--althogh not all applicable to our niche of the world.
3:15:48 PM
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Here are two good podcasts I heard on IT Conversations. The first, a talk by Kathy Sierra, "How to Kick A**" discusses brain processes, the role of memory and techniques to become a better performer. Among other things, you should visualize yourself succeeding. [Note from Gary:The great running back Herschel Walker while at the University of Georgia used to watch film clips of his good moves. That way when he had the same situation, he knew how to react.] Sierra discusses the memory of chess masters. When masters and novices were shown pictures of chess positions that made sense, the masters could remember them far better than novices. When the positions were nonsense, the masters fared no better. This shows the difference experience can give you.
The second podcast is part of Moira Gunn's Tech Nation series, and is an interview with Judy Estrin, CTO of Cisco and author of "Closing the Innovation Gap." Good thoughts on innovation.
3:00:41 PM
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© Copyright 2009 Gary Mintchell.
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