CSIA

I'm blogging live from the Control System Integrators Association meeting in Panama City, Fla. CSIA chairman, Ray Batchelor is explaining the new membership status. Originally, CSIA was going to rquire all their members to pass the audit and be "registered" in three years, or drop out. Instead, they've done something very smart. They've renamed the vendor members "Partners" which frees up the title of Associate Member for newbies and people who don't want to pass the audit. AND, finally after years of arguing about it, CSIA has changed the name of audited members to "Certified" from "registered" member which nobody understands anyway. There are now multiple audit paths for becoming a CSIA Certified Member. This, again is a larger meeting than last year, with 86 Certified members, representing about 60 companies; 58 Associate members; 2 participant members and over 60 vendor Partners. Walt Boyes BlackBerry service provided by Nextel