Bruce Richardson of AMR Research, on the trend of calling every new kind of enterprise software “relationship management” :
“They've hijacked the word relationship; CRM, PRM, SRM, LRM all cost you an ARM and a LEG to deploy. . .they should really call it transaction software. For those of you confused about the difference between a transaction and a relationship, Richard Gere was looking to make a transaction in 'Pretty Woman.' 'When Harry Met Sally' was about a relationship.”
Dynegy Chief Is Much Richer for Being Forced Out. Charles L. Watson could be departing Dynegy with a severance check that is about $33 million more than he would have made had he served out his contract. By Floyd Norris. [New York Times: Business]
Dave: “Good morning everyone, including professional journalists. ”
Good morning to you, Dave.
There's one problem with being at any conference with a badge that has PRESS written on it in inch-tall letters–it scares away the people you want to talk to and attracts mostly the ones you don't (well, at least the ones lower down your priority list–I'll talk to anyone).
I did get to talk to some interesting folks here at the AMR Research conference welcoming reception last night–some folks from ILOG and Peregrine Systems, in particular. Talk was, unsurprisingly, about how brutal the market has been for everybody in the tech food chain–including our hosts, the analysts.
It's going to be 108 here (again) today, so I doubt I'll be taking any long walks up Camelback. I've got a full day of meetings in any case.
Scanning the weeklies today, I find two (so far) articles on adoption of
web services: one in InfoWorld, one in InformationWeek. The
InformationWeek piece seems to confuse plain use of XML with using web
services, even showing XML as “in the lead” in a chart of adoption of
web services standards. I see my former colleage Karyl Scott has moved
over to Optimize… I guess that means IWeek has finally dispensed with
any pretenses of being 'technical'.
The InfoWorld piece at least gets the context right.
The joys of air travel.
I'm flying to Phoenix in steerage class aboard America West flight 84.
It's sardine city, though fortunately there's no one in the center seat
next to me, as the space is filled by my right leg and the legs of the
woman in the window seat.
Across the aisle from me in 6A, some proud new camcorder owner has been
videotaping out the window. He recorded most of the taxi out to the
runway and the take-off; if he hadn't videotaped the clouds, too, I'd
have taken him for a future terrorist, but all signs now point to plain
old video obsession. I hope he does some masterful editing.
As we taxi out, the crew starts doing the safety demo. The video
equipment is broken, so we get the live, drama version instead of the
Hollywood musical.
Once we're airborne, as Mr. Spielberg films the ever-shrinking ground,
the captain announces that lunch/dinner will be served immediately
because of anticipated turbulence. Taking that as my cue, I spring up to
retrieve my computer bag from the overhead compartment-and accidentally
unleash a torrent of canes upon the elderly couple who had tossed them
there. I apologize profusely.
Lunch is served, and it appears America West has something of a
localization problem-the pepper and salt are labelled in English and
Spanish, but the Spanish label on the salt says “pimiento” (pepper) and
the pepper is labelled “sal”.
I'm headed out to Scottsdale, Arizona for the AMR Research spring executive conference this afternoon. If there's anything worth hearing about. you'll see it blogged here.
On Saturday, I went with my wife and daughter to Baltimore's Leakin Park for the annual Herb Festival. But the first attraction of the day at the park was the trains.
The Chesapeake & Allegheny Steam Preservation Society operates a scale model railroad on the grounds of the park. And these just aren't any model trains–they're working scale model steam engines that run on coal. And you can ride on them around the grounds of the park–for free.
We went for a ride. The sensation of riding on a 2-foot high rail car on a 3-foot gauge track was akin to sitting on a coasting skateboard–a steam-powered skateboard at that. We got held up for a bit at the end, as an engine ahead of us had gotten caught at a switch. It took a few minutes for the engineers and conductors to do the requisite backing and maneuvering to clear the switch, and then we rode the last 40 feet to the depot.
These “live steamer” guys are a great bunch. And it's no mean feat to drive one of these engines either–you've got to run the throttle and the brake, pull chunks of coal from between your legs to feed the boiler, and stoke your own fire all at the same time.