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Emerson Global Users Exchange, Day 5
September 17, 2007

The final day of the Exchange was the least eventful, with a program that only covers half a day. By this time most seem concerned with leaving Dallas and how the weather looked. Fortunately, it was a beautiful day, and DFW seemed to have few problems.

Exchange board member Christoph Lebl (left) awards the iPod to Rich Izard. Your correspondent, who compiled the puzzle, is at right.

As one item for the record, the winner of the iPod for solving the Exchange Today crossword puzzle was Rich Izard from the Washington Savannah River Co. in Aiken, SC. It was gratifying to see the number of completed puzzles. The solution is as follows: Berra on sources of data--"Wireless makes it possible to extend condition monitoring into new parts of your process providing new depth for key performance indicators."

The party on Thursday evening was a huge success. Even John Berra was spotted (and photographed) on the dance floor. Another "Berra moment of joy," no doubt. For better or worse, the photos were shot too late for publication in the Exchange Today, so you'll have to use your imagination.

I left Dallas on the 1:55 flight back to O'Hare. When I got on the shuttle for the airport, I realized that was the first time I'd left the Gaylord Texan since arriving on Sunday afternoon. That's something of a biosphere experiment in itself. I had one of those rare and wonderful experiences on the plane, where I had an aisle seat and nobody in the middle. The guy sitting at the window asked me if I had been at the exchange (probably because of the bags under my eyes) and we struck up a conversation. He works for a company that is both a rep organization and a system integrator that sells and uses Emerson products. We chatted for most of the flight. I asked if Emerson was easy to sell for (thinking back to my days of managing rep organizations) and he said that Emerson really does live its motto, "Consider it solved." He'd had some experiences with other companies as well, and did offer some ups and downsides of various points, but on balance, he truly appreciated the relationship with Emerson. Ultimately the discussion came down to those eternal questions, including "How does a process engineer convince management of the economic benefits of process and automation improvements?" That question, and other matters such as "What's the best way to tune a PID loop?" will probably never be answered once and for all.

My thanks to Jeanine Katzel and Katie Cadera who were with me at the site, along with Renee Robbins, Nikki Golden and Frances Baetiong who were back in the office in Oak Brook. Frances gets special stars as she had to wait each evening for the printer to acknowledge all had downloaded safely.

Posted by Peter Welander on September 17, 2007 | Comments (0)