This past fall I was appointed as the Safety theme chair for ISA expo 2009 (Oct 6-8 2009).  Essentially what this means is that I’m responsible for putting together the entire track of safety sessions. 

At first I was honored and excited about the opportunity to put together a 3 day focus on safety.  But now, with the economy as it is, and travel restrictions for many of us, I’m finding this to be a challenging task.

First I needed to assemble my safety committee, and for this I wanted to gather a team representing end-users, consultants and vendors (yes, even my own competitors).  After a few e-mails and phone calls I’m happy to say that I’ve assembled a good group of individuals that includes; Kevin Klein (Celanese), Sean Cunningham (Kenexis) and Jack Murray (Emerson). 

We had our first face-to-face meeting at ISA’s headquarters in Raleigh, NC this past week.    After a couple days of brainstorming, I'm proud to announce that we have agreed on developing sessions on the following:
Safety System maintenance
Safety Fieldbus implementation
Functional Safety Standards update and panel discussion
Safety system application case study’s
Safety Lifecycle Process - Tutorials
Impact of Instrumentation in SIS applications
Safety Lifecycle tools

This year (as with past) it is expected that our program consist entirely of solicited papers and presenters.  While I like the idea, as it allows for us to be more focused and controlled and solicit on papers and presenters who we know will provide a world class event.  It does, however place the burden on us for creating a top-notch event for ISA.  Feel free to let me know what safety topics you'd especially be interested in learning at ISA expo 2009.