Gary Mintchell's Feed Forward

At the Emerson Exchange. First day was a very full day with keynotes followed by a full afternoon of press conferences followed by brief tour of the exhibit hall and then dinner (media people and Emerson executives). I have an interview at 9 and then I'll sit in Jim Cahill's presentation (with Deb Franke) at 10. Then a long form blog. Attendance is down some from last year, but still over 1,600. And the enthusiasm of attendees is obvious. Two straight good conferences with great keynotes makes the traveling worth it.

Keys:

New DeltaV S with "I/O on Demand" and its CHARM modules is a significant new product. An answer to the question "isn't DeltaV getting a little long in the tooth?" (I'm guilty of asking that question a couple of years ago to the consternation of the marketing department.) I'll have more details later, especially a discussion of how Emerson is using Human Centered Design to develop products.

The Wireless news has a couple of nuances. First, WirelessHart products are shipping, installed, and users are saving money with it. Second, users kept using WirelessHart for some control problems, so Emerson decided to test it. First they touted a user example of wireless for control then discussed a University of Texas project with Emerson's Terry Blevins. Takeaway--it works for some (many?) applications.

Gotta run. More later.