World Congress of Engineering Asset Management

We have been working with Assetricity implementing
the MIMOSA Common Conceptual Object Model
information standard for operations and maintenance. This year the
WCEAM was held here in Cincinnati. I was able to
attend the Interoperability for Asset Management workshop for the last couple
of days. While there we ratified the new 3.2.3 CCOM Markup Language standard
I’ve been working on the last year or so.

This project obviously has a lot of “big E” Enterprise baggage. The weight of
that opening paragraph alone rekindles my rebellion from our corporate
overlords. I’ve stuck with this project for several reasons though.

First, it’s really hard. Asset management, maintenance, and condition
monitoring are much more complicated than what I originally thought. It’s an
incredibly broad field with many diverse needs across almost all industries.
There have been many times when I thought, “there must be an easier way to do
this.” However, after understanding more of the context I’ve often come around
to understand why the complexity is needed. Even still it’s almost become a
cliche to remark on how hard this project is.

Second, the goal of the project is aimed squarely at interoperability. It
hopes to chart a course through very difficult waters to unite many of the big
players in the land of “big E”. Instead of staking out its turf and fighting
to the bitter end, the project is trying to help companies get their
heterogeneous environments to work together. From my early days working with
(and on) Linux to focusing on open web standards, this is a goal I can easily
get behind.

In the Ruby (and also Agile) world we often talk about working in the
Enterprise. Glenn Vanderburg has said, “The
Enterprise isn’t ready for Ruby, it’s desperate for it.” After escaping the
Enterprise, I’ve been very suspicious of working with it again. Frankly, I’ve
passed on a couple projects that flew too close to the sun. This is a project
though that allows me to push my ideals into the Enterprise.