Off to Italy...

Gary Mintchell and I have been invited as the "token North Americans" to the European rollout of Emerson's wireless product line that they rolled out in the US last year at Emerson Exchange. The press conference takes place at the Guglielmo Marconi Museum ('inventor of "wireless"'-- get it?) in Bologna, Italy. So I will be flying tomorrow, and will likely not blog until I get to Bologna la grassa (for those of you who failed Italian 101, that's "Bologna the fat"-- so named because modern haute cuisine was invented there-- and you thought the French did it, didn't you? Bologna has the oldest university in Europe, the oldest medical school in europe, and has also been known as "Bologna the Wise." In fairness, since the end of the Second World War, it has also been known as "Bologna the Red" for its leftist politics and leadership. SP100 will be meeting in San Ramon, CA, this week also. I've been talking to several members of the committee who have expressed themselves extremely happy about the direction things have taken since the big meeting in Amsterdam last month. 'Pears the committee has broken the big logjam, and we can expect to see work starting on actually writing a draft standard, instead of arguing about it, relatively shortly. Congratulations, fellow committee members. Let's keep the momentum going, shall we?