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Normally when I register for a conference, especially one that’s several days long, I have an idea about what I’m getting into. This was not the case for OSIsoft’s User Conference (UC2012). Yes, I watched the overview videos (for example, here and here) and looked over the OSIsoft website. It didn’t really prepare me for the level of intrigue that I came away with.

Many of the OSIsoft uers are industries: utilities, oil and gas, chemical plants, pulp and paper mills, metals, pharmaceutical companies, and data centers. Generally they have plants with lots of machines and processes going on. Each of those machines do things that can be measured, and the flow of processes can be recorded in detail and visualized (hence the name of the product, PI system, for Process Information). Early signals of change, when seen by the right people in a plant, can represent a savings of millions of dollars. See, for example, this Power Plant Transformer blowing up.

That was all fascinating, but not the intriguing part of what I learned. In fact, the nature of life is a process. As we live our lives, we do things that get measured, assessed, grouped, visualized, and acted on by others. What if we had more APIs for life–what would that tell us? Yeah, this goes WAY beyond the quantified self. Now imagine if we had APIs for interacting with our personal data sets in a way that accurately reflects our own personal selves and intent. Wouldn’t business be a whole lot more efficient? I think so.

The list of sessions covered here:

• UC2012: Data… Information… Decision-Making: Tackling the Sustainable Energy Management Conundrum
• UC2012: Future of Business Insight
• UC2012: Simplicity is Elegance: Leveraging the PI System in a Dynamic Operating Environment
• UC2012: PI Coresight: Visualization and Analysis for Everyone
• UC2012: Mobile, Cloud and the PI System: The Future is Now
• UC2012: Cloud-based aggregation of high-fidelity, distributed meteorological data
• UC2012: Delivering Information in Real Time
• UC2012: PI system Plays a Critical Role in Energy-Saving
• UC2012: PI Event Frames
• UC2012: A Data Driven Environment
• UC2012: PI Roadmap
• UC2012: The Power of Data Panel
• UC2012: Operational Technology Feeds the Big Data Trend: Integrating Real-Time Data into Decisions
• UC2012: Reliable Energy Delivery in the 21st Century
• UC2012: Opening Keynote: The Power of Data
• UC2012: Delivering on the Sustainability Imperative
• UC2012: The Power of Data to Achieve Sustainable Goals
• UC2012: Implementing the Roadmap to Data Driven Sustainability
• UC2012: The Technology Enablement of Sustainable Business
• UC2012: Linking Technology to the Sustainability Imperative
• UC2012: Sustainability Track
• UC2012: Big (as in Lots of) Data

Themes for today: how to exploit process data, managing energy. Energy a performace data approach–great case study. Issues in 2012 and Energy Efficiency: need to develop a sustainable route forward. We’ve had too many “last times.”

Pressures from outside: energy cost & pressure on operating costs, emissions (including perceptions) and desire for green manufacturing, EU 2020 targets to reduce by 20% in energy, emissions, and get 20% from renewables. We’re not on track though (more like 20% over current). Europe legislation: EU directive on industrial emissions and Draft EU Directive on Energy Efficiency (June 2011). Common theme is systematic energy performnce management–moving toward making it mandatory, also external energy auditing for manufacturing sites. Read more…

Agenda: current state of BI market, Microsoft’s approach to business insight, OSIsoft’s solution, Project Rubik. State of business intelligence: 28% of potential users have ay meaningful acess (Gartner). 32% of Excel users are comfortable using for “advanced analysis” (pivot tables). “Lines between producers and consumers of information have largely disappeared.” 31% of all BI initiatives partially meet or don’t meet business goals originally sent. (BI survey)

Evolution of buisness intelligence: it’s been keeping up with growing demand. Breaking down barriers of control with self-service BI with spreadsheets and specialized tools. (Traditional: provisioning, data staging, data, IT Pro needed.) Read more…

Human Performance monitoring: improvement (studies, created a model) with hockey players. Canadian Army is now looking to use this technology to prevent injuries.

Physiological reacations provide us with a reliable picture of one’s internal state, relationship with the environment. New biosensors allow understanding factors that determine behavior and use of bioenergetic reserves, moving toward surgical analysis of human performance. Model includes time, context, goals, biomechanics, stress & fatigue, decison making… flow of energy and level of performance.

Exoskeleton: supports and protects the body. Muscles are an endoskeleton (internal). Exo- is designed to assist (carrying, moving over irregular terrain). The project is using b-termia dermoskeleton: aalyze and quantify energy use, other factors, in real-time tests and for post-analysis. Monitoring: equipment links, bio-sensors, mobile info, used in PI to produce visual analysis and overviews. Also motion data, heart rate correlation, energy expenditure, later testing for 18 test subjects.

PI system speeds up instrument integration, data analysis, final reporting; biosensors are increasingly available, and the system produces reusable analysis.