OT: Who's who at PLCTalk? Do we have any WW representation? - Rockwell's here

[surferb]

Ken,
That's unfortunate! I would argue that you've given Rockwell a much better name amoung many professionals, particularly smaller integrators and end users who matter in purchasing decisions - especially those decisions that are actually likely to change. Do you really think a few posts will change Boeings corporate standards and big deals?

I understand where the decision is coming from - sounds like a bad day for all.

The time is coming soon when I'll have to drop off entirely from the Forum. Not only does it give my boss direct timestamps of when I'm goofing off (Hi, Jon !), but there have been some new rules come down from the Legal department that insist that employees not attempt to "represent the Company" in Internet forums for liability reasons.

It never occurred to me to hide my identity as a person, or as an RA employee. I don't work in Tech Support, or in Engineering. I'm just a consultant in a field sales office.

One of the things that strikes me about PLCTalk is that most of the participants are from relatively small companies. You don't see anyone from GM, or Toyota, or Boeing, or General Mills, or Procter & Gamble looking for PLC troubleshooting help here.

Maybe it's a matter of lawyers on that level, too. I certainly wouldn't want to expose my professional, paid support exchanges on the Internet.

The threads that I like are not the support and troubleshooting threads, or the "I don't know anything and have no time to read books" threads, but the ones about technique, and algorithms, and control theory. Discussions among professionals and journeymen, not just troubleshooting Q&As.

 

[surferb]

Crossbow - I know who you are on another forum. You're very helpful too! I didn't understand the need for anonymity. In fact, it still seems silly. But let's not even get started on my opinion of most lawyers...

I have worked for a couple vendors and distributors, but will not disclose who. Been posting since long before I got here (or mrplc.com).

I don't say who I work for with the intent that I will not allow my statements based on experience and testing to be interpreted as the corporate answer or as my employer policing the forums. This is something I entirely do on my own outside of business hours. I enjoy sharing my knowledge with others.

At one point in the past something I said on a forum was used by a vendor to take a pot shot at my employer and try to get them in trouble. Of course it was because the morons at the vendor didn't read or understand my post. So for now I must remain anonymous.

I will say I have years of experience with Modicon, Omron, Siemens S7-200, and Mitsubishi. Also a bit of small Micrologix and Idec peppered in there too.

 

[DaveW]

It just occured to me, I can't think of a single Wonderware tech support agent or distributer here. What set this off was a simple Intouch pricing question, and an easy InSQL question, to which users provided good advice, but never a good (authoritative) answer. In retrospect, this always seems to be the case. Not good representation for our fearless industry leader.

Wonderware got their own forum and it's frequent by their tech support people as well as their vendors and their support team. You may get a better response over there.

 

[S7Guy]

Wonderware got their own forum and it's frequent by their tech support people as well as their vendors and their support team. You may get a better response over there.

I think that pretty much nails it. Whether a vendor makes an appearance here or not depends on the quality of their own online support. I wouldn't come here and ask an Inductive Automation question in a million years, because one of their own guys would be all over it if I post on their own site. But at the Siemens site, I can't even navigate their forum (for some reason, I can only see the first and last pages; maybe they fixed it) and many of the interesting questions only get a response like "Please contact Siemens Support". At places like IA, not only do they explain the solution well, but they take it a step further and offer sample code, alternative approaches, etc. Places like this is the only place where I can get a quick, reliable answer to a Siemens question from someone who actually uses the equipment every day in practical applications.