Who? What? Why? Where? When? and How?
From coffee to beer T
Steve Rogerson’s round-up of last month’s news and events, including some that may have slipped under the radar
he IPlanet exhibition in Taiwan in November was dominated by a massive Advantech stand to coincide with the company’s World Partner Conference that was taking place in Taipei at the same time. The Advantech PR person was very keen to impress me with the automatic coffee ordering system in the seating area at the centre of the stand. “Wouldn’t it be easier just to ask for a
coffee,” I enquired, pointing at the willing staff behind the counter. “Oh no,” she said enthusiastically, “we have to embrace the new technology.” So I obliged by pressing various bits of the touchscreen and was predictably served the wrong order and had to resort to asking in the old fashioned way while pondering on the fact that this was called: “The Intelligent Café”.
A better drink was the can of beer I was
offered to demonstrate the built-in breath tester that comes as part of the firm’s in- vehicle surveillance system. It didn’t work for me – I must have overloaded it. I was also amused by the instruction in the seminar programme brochure that said
“delegates can only attend one presentation per time slot”. That put paid to my cloning plans and reminded me of the announcement on the tube in London that says: “Please use all available doors.” I have never quite worked out how to do that.
I wasn’t exactly filled with confidence at
a recent meeting of the Safety-Critical Systems Club, the people who are working hard to stop major accidents due to computer software problems. The company’s Tom Anderson, who is a
director at the Centre for Software Reliability at Newcastle University, had to have someone else operate his Powerpoint show as he admitted he didn’t really know how to use it. Interestingly, apparently the club nearly never got founded as it initially relied on government funding. The government at the time in 1991 was not too keen on the idea of a club for engineers as it associated the word “club” with a certain type of gentlemen’s club that was getting bad publicity at the time.
I have thought for a while that the
assisted living healthcare scheme that aims to use technology to bring more medical facilities into the home was a little wide of the mark calling the project Dallas. OK, Dallas may stand for “delivering assisted living lifestyles at scale” but to me it always draws up images of an American soap opera and the large city in Texas where it was set. Not so, said Graham Worsley of the Technology Strategy Board at the recent Medelec medical electronics conference in Cambridge.
“Dallas is also a small town in Scotland, and that came first and they make whisky,” he said.
In that case, it gets my vote. Another medical firm caught my attention at a different event. Many companies go to great lengths to get their logos seen and known. Thankfully, that is not the case for Dräger Medical, which makes medical devices that end up in operating theatres. The company’s senior software developer Florian Mösch was at the recent Coverity Exchange conference in London were he was telling people how static analysis tools made the company’s products better. But first he made no apology for having to tell delegates about his company.
“I hope you have not seen our logo
before,” he said. “If you have, it may have been because your life was in danger. Our logo appears mostly on life-saving medical equipment.”
The event was in Heathrow and I’ll be back in Heathrow at Easter for Olympus –
no, not Olympics, that is in the summer and involves a lot of running and jumping and stuff. Olympus is far more relaxed as that is the name of this year’s annual British Science Fiction Convention, and I’m one of the organisers, so I suspect I will be doing a fair bit of running. Anyway, the main guest is George RR Martin, who wrote the book on which the recent Game of Thrones TV series was based. I hope to see some of you there.
In the meantime, I am exploring one of the downfalls of modern technology while drinking decent beers at the same time. One of the apps I downloaded onto my shiny new IPhone was Cask Marque. You may have seen the Cask Marque symbol on some pubs, as they are the people who reward bars for keeping their beers in tip- top condition. The Cask Marque app shows a map highlighting all the pubs close to where you are that have been Cask Marque accredited. And it works. They have now taken this a step further. If, when you visit a pub, you scan in the QR symbol from their Cask Marque certificate then, when you have 100, you get prizes. Good eh? Well, not really. The technology is fine and I have so far scanned in two pubs. The snag is that I have visited more than ten Cask Marque pubs to do so. The rest end up with blank looks from people behind the bars when you ask then where their certificate is. The people element is always the problem with good technology. Cheers.
Harriet Green recognised in FT Top 50 Women in World Business
previous 12 months. Those in the top 50 was selected based on information on the executives’ performance and durability, the size, scope and complexity of the organisation along with the competitive landscape and company performance in the 3 years to June 30 2011. Commenting Val Gooding, Chairman of
Premier Farnell, said “Over the past five years Harriet has been instrumental in the transformation of Premier Farnell to a global web business, through a strategy focussed on profitable growth, and we are proud that she has been recognised in this way by the FT. These are challenging times and ensuring your business is agile will be more important than ever. As we continue to innovate and evolve as a company, to meet the needs of our customers, it is the strength of our leadership will help us differentiate.”
A new reader
Always good to see CIE attracting new readers. Here the Prime Minister takes a look at the November issue during his visit to LPRS in his Witney constituency in Oxfordshire.
46 December 2011/January 2012 Components in Electronics
Premier Farnell’s CEO, Harriet Green, has been named at number 30 in this year’s Financial Times Top 50 Women in World Business list. The annual list highlights the 50 women who have had the biggest impact on global business over the
The announcement followed Green’s winning of the Limelight Award at this year’s Electronics Day Awards, which were held in Munich, at the end of November. The Limelight Award focuses on the impact she has made over the past 12 months on leveraging green manufacturing technologies in order to increase competitiveness within the business.
www.cieonline.co.uk
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