|
 |
Monday, January 5, 2009 |
This is an interesting announcement on at least two levels. The WBF (the forum for automation and manufacturing professionals, formerly known as World Batch Forum) has announced it is postponing its annual conference this year and it is parting ways with ISA as the operations arm of the organization. It will hold a "Press and Sponsors Day" sometime in March in the Chicago area. This way the annual Control magazine Process Automation Hall of Fame banquet and awards ceremony can still be held. Yokogawa Corp. of America is the other sponsor of the event.
"We believe that we need to respond to the global economic situation in an appropriate way," says Maurice Wilkins, outgoing Chair of WBF. "We've decided that a conference held as early in 2009 as we had originally scheduled it would not serve the membership and sponsors of WBF."
Regarding the Press day, George Devine, technical director of WBF, says "We will be inviting the global press and our sponsors to a detailed press briefing discussing the repositioning of WBF into an organization that can have a significant impact on manufacturing going forwardâo[ring]Ã[greater equal]¶as significant an impact as it has had in the past, with the adoption of ISA88 and ISA95 in manufacturing worldwide."
When the Automation Federation was formed by the ISA, I was under the impression that ISA wanted to become the managing arm for a number of smaller organizations. This never really came off, and the Federation has changed directions toward becoming a lobbying organization for the automation industry.
"WBF will be remaining as part of the Automation Federation," says Bill Stewart, incoming Chair of WBF, "but WBF and ISA have arrived at a mutual decision to separate the operations of WBF from ISA." WBF has retained the services of KCA, Inc. as its association management company, under the direction of newly-appointed technical director, George Devine, reporting to the board of directors.
"What you'll see in March," Wilkins says, "is a revitalized organization that will serve production and automation technology in the process and discrete manufacturing industries long into the future."
"Other organizations tell you why, and what, for manufacturing execution and manufacturing operations management," says WBF founder Lynn Craig, "but we tell you how. And we're the only organization that can tell you how--and have for over 15 years."
WBF is the home of B2MML, the batch to manufacturing markup language, as well as the continuing global forum for education on ISA88, the batch manufacturing standard, and ISA95, the manufacturing operations language standard.
9:59:49 PM 
|
|
Happy 2009 (I hope). More than usual, no one knows what this year will bring. I've seen a few budding signs of optimism, but there is also a wealth of bad news. 2008 was a good year for automation suppliers--but a bad year for many of their customers. 2009 could bring some downturn for the suppliers--although most are globally dispersed and could weather things.
I was surprised to discover several somewhat naive marketing communications people in the last year who didn't understand the business model of magazines. Well, magazines are a business, and the source of revenue is advertising for the most part. I became acquainted with the concept of "guerilla marketing" almost 25 years ago in my first marketing position where I had zero marcom funds. The concept -- still alive today -- is that a company can achieve the same objectives that advertising brings at no cost. You do that by getting editors to publish news releases, interviews and other information. Nothing wrong with that. Editors love getting new information. The problem is the vicious circle. Free publicity for those companies is at the expense of the companies who buy the services of the magazines. No paying customers means no pages.
I expect a lot more pressure on my media relations friends this year for media placements, so I thought I'd kick off the year with some of the things I'm looking for in my various media roles. Note that I'm looking for feedback on a couple of ideas.
Automation World -- the magazine and Website. Always looking for news and product information. Descriptions of upcoming articles for three months in advance can be found here. For feature articles, we are looking for stories about how people have applied technologies, products and ideas to improve manufacturing. We also try to describe new technologies that impact manufacturing. For departments, we are looking for specific information germane to the topic of the department. Contact information for staff and contributing editors can be found here. More information about working with AW can be found on those two pages. Anyone can contact me with story ideas--please.
Podcasts. I have a personal podcast called Automation Minutes. It can also be found on the Automation World Website along with other podcasts which may be custom (sponsored) or by another editor. My podcasts are either my thoughts or interviews with an expert who may be a supplier engineer if the topic is not promotional, an academic, a consultant or an end user who describes an application or idea. I've had some great interviews with people such as Paul Wacker of Advantech on Ethernet, Jonas Berge of Emerson Process or Kris Pister of Dust Networks. Recently Joe Grove of ProMach, a packaging machinery OEM, provided good ideas about designing machines for what customers want. I'd love to have some super interviews in 2009.
Question for the readers: What would you all think about a series of interviews with automation supplier senior executives on the state of their business, new product/service initiatives, industry outlook, and that sort of thing? Every marketing communications person will be in favor, so I'm really looking for the opinions of readers. Of course, if I did it, trying to pare down the 150 requests or so that I'd get to a manageable number would be an interesting exercise. Please let me know what you think about this gmintchell at automationworld.com
Blogs. I have two blogs. One is my personal blog called Feed Forward. The other is a product blog called Automation Gear.
My personal blog covers news and opinions about automation, leadership, soccer (occasionally) along with links to things I find interesting and think might be useful. As with all bloggers, I'm always watching for interesting information, read widely and chat with interesting people. I'm always open to ideas.
The Automation Gear blog is my idea for a way to cover products in a new way for our industry. It's modeled on Engadget, CrunchGear and Gizmodo--just refined for our niche. Readers can subscribe to an RSS feed, or just visit the Website often.
5:01:00 PM
|
|
© Copyright 2009 Gary Mintchell.
|
|
|
