<Rant>

I'm really angry at the fact that we see regularly posts like this in many forums around the Internet:

This works perfect for me. Dont understand why this happens. Shouldn't [vendor name redacted] sort this out??? Im going to contact their sales rep about this. If it wasnt for these forums we would be lost.

After a gangbusters start yesterday with over 40 people attending the pre-conference short courses taught by me, John Kuensler of ARC and Jim Geisman who is one of the two leading gurus of pricing for technology products, and a terrific keynote by Julie Fraser, Principal Industry Analyst from Cambashi, Inc.

Julie's talk was "Bridging the Engineering-IT Divide" and she's agreed to produce an article for Control magazine on the subject.

Opto 22 sent me this thought-provoking press release. Opto has twigged to the blending of entertainment and education that especially younger automation professionals appear to be expecting. Just a quick look on YouTube gets us this interesting set of benchmarks. Searching on "industrial automation" gets 389 videos. Searching on "sensors" gets 13,600!! videos. "Process control" gets you 1860 videos.

And, of course, ControlGlobal.com's Process Automation Media Network has been producing...

Dick Morley drew my attention to this press release from Newswise. Note the comments about the pharmaceuticals industry by graduate student Riley Gaddy:

Students Put Web 2.0 Through a Test in Virtual Classroom

Newswise — Students from Indiana University's Kelley School of Business worked in synch -- virtually -- with cohorts at North Carolina State University's Jenkins Graduate School of Management this past spring to learn about service innovation without ever le...