Walt Boyes' Blog

I've been privately advised that there are people in ISA's management, both staff and volunteer, who are very upset at me for taking what they see as "shots" at ISA. Frankly, they can be as upset as they want. The day I stop arguing for a better ISA, one that better serves its members, and its stakeholders, is the day I finally come to the conclusion that the organization is … [Read more...] about About criticism of ISA…

For a complete change of pace, the next speaker was Gerald Liu, speaking as an ISA member. He really works for Syncrude but hadn't had time to clear his presentation with the corporate hoodoos in charge of such things. Gerald provided a provocative theory on why control valves fail often. His presentation will be an article in an upcoming CONTROL magazine issue, and just let me … [Read more...] about More from the Oil Sands Conference

ISA has once again issued its call for papers for the technical conference in Houston. I am posting it below to give everybody the opportunity of providing a response to the call. ISA paper sessions have suffered greatly over the past ten years, mostly from non-attendance and the fact that real authorities don't want to give papers at ISA any more. There are a number of reasons … [Read more...] about ISA Call for Papers for EXPO 2006

I was torn about missing all the excellent presentations (and there were some very good ones scheduled) at WBF on Tuesday and Wednesday, but once I sat through the presentations in Ft. McMurray, I knew I'd made the right decision. I gave the same talk I gave in Atlanta on Tuesday...The View Ahead: World Wide Trends in Automation and Integration... The difference in Ft. McMurray … [Read more...] about 3rd Annual ISA Oil Sands Conference

David Broussard from Managing Automation, Agnes Shanley from Pharmaceutical Manufacturing and I did a panel discussion on the future of automation...I did it from the point of view of the general automation end-user, Agnes from the point of view of the pharma engineer, and David from the point of view of the business systems looking down. Agnes talked about using automation … [Read more...] about Tuesday Morning at WBF…