I was on the BPMG site today, specifically the articles launch page, and I noticed that they appear to be using a graphic that is identical to the Bloglines plumber (the page that Bloglines puts up when they are down for maintenance). Who’s copying whom?
Tag: BPMG
BPMG Toronto chapter starts up
BPMG Toronto is kicking off with its inaugural meeting on November 29th, 8:30-11:00am at webMethods‘ downtown Toronto office. You can see all the details and express your interest at the upcoming.org link.
The meeting is free and all are welcome, but you need to RSVP to Jim Baird if you plan to attend.
BPM Summit Las Vegas
If you missed BPM 2005 this week in London, you can attend the 3rd Annual Business Process Management Summit later this month in Las Vegas run by IQPC. BPMG is listed as a media partner and is providing only one speaker (according to the brochure), so this is in no way the same as the London event, but looks to have some excellent content as well.
The standards debate
Another funny thing from yesterday at BPM 2005: at a BPM standards panel session that included representatives from BPMI, WfMC, OMG and OASIS, Dave Petraitis from OASIS took great exception to an audience member’s suggestion that a standard could be biased in favour of a particular vendor. C’mon Dave, why do you think that vendors sit on a standards committe? It’s not purely altruistic, and they’re not just there to learn about the standard so that they can incorporate it into future products; they’re there, in part, to attempt to influence the standard to their way of doing things, both to make it easier for them to conform and to provide them with some competitive advantage.
Also heard Martyn Ould speak yesterday afternoon, and went online to buy his book from Amazon with hopes that it will be waiting for me when I get home.
Skype at BPM 2005
Between the conference, friends, travelling and keeping up with the news from home, no time to blog until now. BPM 2005 is working out to be a very rewarding conference: some great presentations and networking with old friends, new acquaintances and BPM thought leaders who I have only ever met electronically before this week.
One thing from yesterday that I would not have missed: Peter Fingar was to present one of the keynote speeches, but at the last minute was unable to fly over. However, he used Skype to call into the presentation PC (which was connected to the room’s AV system) and give his talk, someone else flipped his slides for him, and with the lights turned low, it was easy to forget that he wasn’t in the room. Kudos to Peter and to Roger Burlton (who played “Vanna White” for him with the slides) for coming up with a creative solution to what could have been a disappointment for all.
More later tonight or tomorrow when I’ve had a chance to digest the three days, but I have to say that this has been a great catalyst for my creative spark, and I’m brimming with ideas. I’ve been thinking about BPM and EA together for quite a while, and have heard several things this week that shows me that others are thinking the same thing.
Insufficient platform testing, my bad
When I posted about software testing, I never imagined that I would be so blatantly in violation of good testing principles: I added Google ads that were slightly too wide for my right sidebar, and on Internet Explorer, they made the entire sidebar shift to the bottom of the page after all the content. On Firefox, which I use, it looks fine. My only excuse is that it’s been so long since I gave up coding for pure analysis and design that I’ve become lazy about cross-platform testing, which is a pretty poor excuse.
Note to self: always test template changes on both Firefox and IE.
My formerly bandwidth-challenged friends now have wireless broadband in the house, so I’m online in London and loving it. More tomorrow after BPM 2005 day 1.
BPMG London
I’m headed for the BPMG conference in London. I’ll try to blog some daily notes about the conference; I’m staying with bandwidth-challenged friends, but there is wireless connectivity at the conference site.
At most conferences, presentation materials are handed out on CD, which is my preferred method of receiving them since my paper filing space is reserved for things that can’t be easily scanned. As an added bonus, BPMG has made most of these materials available online to attendees ahead of time: I can download and review them at my leisure (such as on the flight over), or even print them to take to the conference if I decide not to carry my laptop every day.
If you’re at the conference, look me up.
BPMG London conference
Looking at the BPMG’s 13th annual conference in London next month, some interesting material at all levels. It appears that this is really the main BPMG conference worldwide, which makes sense because BPMG started in the UK and there is a strong BPM community there. The conference in Las Vegas later in May doesn’t seem to have the breadth of London’s event, and I really don’t want the Vegas immersion experience anyway. Besides which, they have one price for “Industry Professionals” and a higher price for “Vendors/Consultants” — what’s with that? I do consulting for a living (although I hate the word “consultant” because of the high number of IT charlatans who assume that title), but I’m certainly considered an industry professional: would I have to pretend not to be a consultant to get a fair price?
When did 3-day conferences get so expensive? The London 3-day (workshops plus conference) is the equivalent of $C3,200, plus the cost of travel and living… a pretty significant outlay for a small business. The Vegas conference is even more for a day of workshops plus the conference, and increases further by adding evening workshops to top out at over $C5,000. Given that budgets are still tight in many organizations, who can justify attending these?