General Assembly Meeting, PROFIsafe, and a road trip

We’ve nailed down most of the details for the PTO General Assembly Meeting.  This is our 12th and my 11th. Where does the time go?  And more importantly, how could I have missed one?  I really get excited about these events.  Learn lots.  Teach some.  Visit old friends.  Make new ones.  Observe the competitive attendee behavior at the pool and bowling tournaments!  Surprisingly, the competitive behavior among these competitive vendors is limited to the tournaments.  During the meetings, all are focused on the common goals of advancing PROFIBUS and PROFINET.  We still have a speaking slot left for a user to share their experiences with PROFIBUS and/or PROFINET.  If you are such a user or know of one, let me know.  Find out more about the PTO General Assembly Meeting here.

While other networks have safety as a PowerPoint and a spec, we have over 20,000 installations using over 190,000 devices.  These numbers just officially announced yesterday and cover through the end of 2005.  PROFIsafe is definitely a “safe” bet.  To encourage vendors to develop even more PROFIsafe products, we have a PROFIsafe Developer Class scheduled in conjunction with the General Assembly Meeting.  And for users who just need to understand more about safety applications (exemplified by PROFIsafe, of course), we are also offering a PROFIsafe User Overview Class.  See more about the Developer Class and register here.

Back on the road again for me starting tomorrow.  I have to stop in my native Ohio for a niece’s wedding, before heading to Boston for the PROFINET one-day training class there on May 31.  Today was the last day of eligibility for the early bird raffle for Boston, but there is still time to register – right up to the day before.  We only have 80 some registered so we still have room for you – register online.  From Boston I’m off to Las Vegas to present at a member’s user conference, then to California for the meeting of PROFIBUS International’s regional organizations.  So I’ll add road blogger to my road warrior credentials for the next month.