Go Flow

I just want to highlight an excellent post by William Vambenepe on the subject of BPMN to BPEL: going to battle with one hand tied? He does a very simple experiment: draw a meaningful diagram in BPMN, in this case a fairly simple one involving an Inclusive-OR branch, and then attempt to convert this to BPEL. He does this conversion and presents the results is quite obviously a diagram that fails in fact to capture the exact meaning. He says he has no solution to this problem.

William, I have your answer, but it is kind of cheating: “WYDIWYE” The solution is to NOT convert to BPEL at all. Why can’t the engine take the BPMN diagram directly? Why does it have to be converted at all?

Think about it: if you can draw a diagram that is unambiguous and the rules are clear, why not simply transfer that entire diagram to the engine, and let the engine execute it exactly? A conversion always involves loss of information, or at best, retaining the same information, and the problems of “round-tripping” conversions are widely discussed. What would be the advantage in converting the diagram to BPEL?

Internally, the engine can convert to anything it wants. If it is internally a BPEL engine, then it can convert to its own brand of BPEL. If it is Ruby based, it can convert to Ruby. As users, why should we care what it converts to for execution?

There are a number of engines that interpret the diagram directly without needing translation. WYDIWYE: What You Draw Is What You Execute. This is exactly what Interstage BPM does, but Fujitsu is not the only BPM vendor out there that does this. (Others can chime in, please.) I often get asked: “do you convert this diagram to BPEL?” My response is “Why should we want to do that?” We send the entire diagram, unconverted, to the engine, where it is executed directly. There is no benefit I can see to stripping the process down to the executable part for giving it to an engine.

There are several clear advantages of WYDIWYE:

• The additional non-executable information (graphics, etc) as useful in order to display the running process to a user.
• If you offer on-the-fly modification, then you have the entire process to start modifying. Not possible if you have only a BPEL extraction.
• If it fails to execute the BPMN diagram that I drew, then the engine can explain to me on that diagram what is wrong. It is difficult to communicate problems back to the user if the form is changed from the original.
• You can always convert it later to BPEL if you wish, given that you have the complete diagram.

Seriously: what do you gain by converting to BPEL before giving it to the engine? BPEL strips out non-executable aspects of the BPMN diagram. Even those that claim all is preserved do not deny that often the form is changed to be unrecognizable. Also, consider that the Diagram is the Meaning in many cases.

WYDIWYE: What You Draw Is What You Execute. Why does the diagram have to be stripped down to the executable part before giving it to the engine?

Will you be forced to pay royalties in order to watch your child’s performance on your TV at home? That videotape of your child’s band concert might be illegal, due to overzealous enforcement of copyright laws by the music industry. Motivated by greed, the music industry has simply gone too far.

Consider the case of Mike. He has two kids playing in the high school band: Tom and Nicole. Mike is a typical band booster: he volunteers on the music association board, he helps load and unload all the equipment at events, sometimes he even drives the truck. The kids love the band. They hang out with a group of students who are motivated to cooperate to collectively put on a show. Band students tend to do well in school, and they learn important skills in being able to work with others.

Mike, like most parents, is very proud of his kids’ accomplishments. He wants to capture videotape of every moment of their performance on the field. He wants to show Tom’s and Nicole’s grandparents who live across the country. Never mind the amateur style of photography, there is nothing more delightful than seeing your child or grandchild actually taking part in an successful performance. You and I might not want to watch these recordings, but Mike and his wife would treasure these memories for many years. But Mike is banned from using his video camera at events.

Increasingly, band events are outlawing the use of video cameras to film the kids. The problem: music is being recorded “synchronized” with images of marching - this incurs special synchronization royalties. The organizations that put on such events are truly heroic in giving young student the opportunity to perform, but clearly they are struggling to comply with the legal issues: “Over the past several years, compliance with copyright law has become a matter for close scrutiny by the copyright owners and publishers of copyrighted music. “

That video recording of your child’s birthday party with the kids singing “Happy Birthday”? — you owe royalties for performance, mechanical reproduction, and synchronization. You probably thinking that this is not possible, because these home recordings are “non-commercial” and therefor not subject to payment of royalty. This is a commonly held misunderstanding about copyrights: you don’t have to charge money to be liable for royalty. There is a standard royalty rate for mechanical reproduction (1.75 cents/minute = $1.05/hour) for every copy. You don’t even have to have any public presentations of the video.

You might be thinking: “but they will never catch me.” Cameras are so small now, there is no way such an event could be policed. Which is why event organizers are turning to blanket bans on the equipment. Mike and his wife are made to feel like they are breaking the law just to get a few shots of the kids in a key accomplishment. Mike always complies with the rule; it can still be very uncomfortable sitting next to another parent who is flagrantly taping the entire show. Do you tell them to stop? Why does the event even have to put you into this situation? Why can’t we be allowed to videotape our own kids?

I am a lot like Mike: my kids play in the school band. (But, to be honest, I don’t carry a video camera, see my posts on HDR for my particular obsession.) I went along with the high school band on their final performance at a band competition in East Los Angeles in November of 2007. I was shocked to see signs posted all over the arena saying “No Videotaping Allowed in Respect for the Copyright Owners of the Music”. The reason given for banning all camcorders was that there was no permission for “mechanical reproduction” of the songs being played. The music industry feels the need to prevent the parents from recording their own kids, because this might cut into their profits.

Let me remind the reader: we are talking about high school bands in a marching band competition. This is not going to steal audience from any pop-star concert. The audience consists exclusively of adoring parents, musical teachers, and assistants. Nobody is going to get rich stealing footage from these concerts. Do those music industry executive seriously think that people are going to sell these recordings? Is it going to hurt them in any realistic way? Yet for Mike, this is a serious affront. His kids have been working all season long on this show. They have attended half a dozen competitions, each time getting a little better, a little more in sync, a little more polished. This final concert is the ultimate conclusion of a season’s work. Those kids have never played better, but I can’t actually show you. “No Video Cameras Allowed!”

The law is on the side of the music industry: copyright owners have been given by the government exclusive right to control performance, mechanical reproduction, and synchronization of music. Fifty years ago mechanical reproduction and synchronization was something that only the most accomplished musicians had access to. But today the typical child carries such capabilities in their pocket cell phone and the law is an anachronism which is abused. Such a recording might be considered fair use, but the burden of proof is on the defendant, and the resulting chilling effect is the banning of video cameras at high school band events.

The irony is that Mike is not making a video tape because he wants a copy of the music. The Band might be playing Beethoven; it is not his objective to get a copy of the Beethoven piece. Instead, his objective is to capture the experience of the band performance, the actions of the kids. This experience belongs to the audience. The music is, in some sense, incidental. Like the video of the birthday party: the purpose is to capture the event, and not to steal another recording of “Happy Birthday”. The current law make no distinction as to the purpose of the recording.

A typical high school band will spend thousand of dollars licensing music for the kids to play. This is valuable and legitimate so children can learn to play. But the terms of this license border on the bizarre. Music licensed to high school bands is not automatically licensed for “mechanical reproduction”! What are these people thinking? When you license music to a senior or junior high school band, you can be sure that parents want to videotape their own children.  Getting a mechanical reproduction license requires significant additional trouble of estimating how many minutes of video tape are going to be recorded, and license at a a few cents per minute of recording! Few schools, already strapped for money and volunteers, can afford this or have the manpower to follow up on this. They are forced into the only alternative: ban camcorders at the concerts.

Clearly professional bands performing for a fee owe a portion of what they make to the writers of the music. High school bands are not professional. These are music students, and the performance is essentially a final exam. But don’t let Mom or Dad make a recording of this, because that might be stealing profits from ASCAP or BMI.

The Music industry has simply gone too far, and bans the use of certain songs at events. Reading the band competition site is sad and poignant: “In some cases, the [banned] songs listed above were included because the copyright owner has already advised Bands of America that they are not willing to grant video synchronization rights for marching band videos” Apparently “God Bless America” is not allowed by the owners to to be used in a band concert. Walt Disney will not allow any music from a current release. Don’t even think of playing a James Bond theme. There are many more specific publishing companies that refuse to let school bands play their music, but I don’t want to give them free publicity here. Makes me wonder: what are they afraid of? “They’re protecting an archaic industry,” said the Grateful Dead’s Bob Weir.

The local high school band does not have much money, but still diligently licenses all music. That is why they are concerned when they are told they can not make a “mechanical recording” of their legitimately licensed music. When the company sells music to a school band with 150 students, you have to expect that there will be between 150 and 300 parents in the audience wanting to video tape it. This is just common sense. Allowance for this should be part of the deal.

I have no sympathy for fat-cat music executives who sell music to a high school band, and then turn around and invoke a special clause that prevent parents from videotaping their children in the final concert. How sad it is that the music industry is so money grubbing that it feels that your home videos of little Tom and Nicole are a threat to it. As Americans we should change this anachronistic law. As long as we are not selling the recording for profit, we should fight for the right to record, photo, videotape any public performance by family members, friends, and community members. These recordings capture our experiences to which the music is just a backdrop. Our memories should not be copyrighted.

• Bands of America - Copyright Guide
• Mechanical Reproduction Rights Primer
• BOA Participant Requirements
• RIAA vs. The People
• The Promise of a Post-Copyright World
• Stanford Fair-Use Center

What can you do? Write your congressman. Promote a law that allows music performed by a student group to be recorded and used for any non-commercial use. Call it the “Freedom to Videotape” law. Or perhaps it should be an amendment to the constitution to give us the “Right to Royalty-Free Memories”.

Yup, we never stop inventing new stuff here, and to prove it, check out the latest new product: Fujitsu Unveils Laptop Made of Corn. What will we think of next?

Also seen on inhabitat.com.

If you don’t have an HD TV yet, you are sure to have one soon. Somewhere I read 50% of households have a digital TV, and I suppose some large fraction of that will be HD. But here is the scam: eventually you are going to need an HDMI cable, and the electronics store knows that you are not going to think ahead. Funny thing: all the cables are so very expensive. Not anything like the TV, but often between $100 and $150 for a 3 to 6 foot piece of wire. If you are lucky, they may have a “discounted cable” for $85.

Why are they so expensive? There is no real reason. HDMI is a digital connection, and there is a certification standard. As long as the cable meets the standard, the picture should be exactly equivalent. If you look around, you can find an HDMI cable on the web for $6 to $8 with gold plated connectors and fully certified. These places have HDMI cables for “normal” prices:

• http://www.mycablemart.com/store/cart.php?m=product_detail&p=813
• http://www.eforcity.com/hdmi-hdmi-cable.html
• http://www.dcables.net/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWCATS&Category=112
• http://www.optimization-world.com/products/catid/2.html

What is going on? Simple psychology. Most consumers will forget to buy the cable, until they discover they need one, and it is 30 minutes to the opening kickoff of the superbowl. They know you are are going to focus on the main purchase: the 50 or so inches of gleaming glass and glow where you will shell out between $2K to $5K or more. “Would you like a cable with that?” they will say. What difference does $100 make in a purchase of this size? Who wants to take home a brand new TV, and not be able to turn it on to watch? Who wants to take home a brand new PlayStation or other high def DVD player, and then have to wait a week or more to be able to enjoy the full resolution? You are going to want the cable right then. The markup on these cable is in the 10x range if you buy from an electronics retailer.

I went (of course) to Fry’s to search for a better deal. In the TV department, they had the standard $85 cable on display. I looked they guy in the eye and pointed out that Fry’s is a discount store, and he said I could find a better deal in the electronic parts department. Over on the other side of the store, I found the rack where HDMI cables hang empty. After rummaging around on top of the overhead shelf, I found a package with a 6 foot cable for $25 that someone had probably stashed up there for possible recovery later. That was clearly the best deal I was going to get three days before Christmas.

The retailers know that they “have you” over the cable and that is why the prices are uniformly high. And, to be fair, none of them are going to sell more TV’s by lowering the prices of the cable. But it just plain bugs me that the price is so inflated.

Here is my recommendation: click on one of the links now (do it right now) and purchase an $8 cable and have it shipped to you the slowest, cheapest way. Eventually, probably in the next year, this is going to save you money. It might save you anywhere from $20 to $50. Either way, a $10 investment with a 2x to 5x return within a year is a good investment in anyone’s book. But the satisfaction of telling the saleman you don’t need the cable is priceless. Even if you don’t have an HD TV, and are not planning to get one in the next year. A you might be the guy (or gal) with a spare HDMI cable, 30 minutes before the superbowl game.

Links to similar articles: arstechnica, gizmodo, macrumors, searchwarp, cnet, playstation.

I have been arguing for years that disabled (greyed-out) menu items and buttons are in general a bad idea because it is impossible for users to know why the associated function is not enabled at the. It is quite frustrating: the user sees a menu command that looks like it might be what is needed, but it is disabled, and there is not at all obvious why it is disabled. I wrote a blog entry about this last year: “Please Don’t Disable My Menu Options!” and includes some references to noted UI experts on the issue.

Today a colleague pointed out to me a small advance in the area: the new UI guidelines for Vista include this recommendation:

Reconsider disabled controls. Disabled controls can be hard to use because users literally have to deduce why they are disabled. Disable a control when users expect it to apply and they can easily deduce why the control is disabled. Remove the control when there is no way for users to enable it or they don’t expect it to apply, or leave it enabled, but give an error message when it is used incorrectly.

• Tip: If you aren’t sure whether you should disable a control or give an error message, start by composing the error message that you might give. If the error message contains helpful information that target users aren’t likely to quickly deduce, leave the control enabled and give the error. Otherwise, disable the control.

Thank you, Microsoft. You have reaffirmed my faith that some day, user interfaces will be advanced beyond the “simple rules and superstition” that we have today. It is a SMALL step, to be sure, and still leaves plenty of room for misapplication. My experience is that programmers usually make the mistake of thinking that a user will find something obvious, because the programmer’s knowledge of the system makes it hard to understand the viewpoint of someone who does not understand the system. Consequently, we will see whether programmers will correctly estimate whether users “can easily deduce” why something is disabled. Even if the reason is obvious, why not go ahead and display a message spelling it out. Leaving it disabled is a lot like a taunt; e.g. “if you can’t figure out why this control is disabled, then you shouldn’t be using this product“. I have been taught that when a person asks a question, no matter how obvious the answer, it is most polite to simply answer the question. A small step in the right direction is better than none.

WfMC experts are again presenting the standards tutorials at two venues in Europe.

1. Poznań Poland.  Due to a big upsurge in BPM use in Poland in the past couple of years, we were invited to present a day and a half on Oct 8 and 9.  Here are links for overview and registration.

2. Paris La Défense, France.  We have long had membership in the coalition in France, it is nice to finally hold an event there on Oct 10.  Here is a links for  registration (in French).

WfMC members take note:  will be holding the fall meeting of the WfMC in Paris, hosted by TIBCO, on Oct 11 and 12.

I have been discussing HDR photography with friends and colleagues for the past few weeks, but it seems what everyone needs is a really good example. I have published a bunch of HDR photos on my Flickr page. But the real question is where do you really need this. Since discovering this technique, I find my self looking for shots where the dynamic range is beyond that which my camera can handle. I set up these shots just to see how it will look. This past weekend I succeeded in finding an example where HDR really makes a difference.

Below is a picture of a room and a window. Most photographers know that this shot is going to be difficult at best. The exposure either needs to be set for the room, or for the outside, but you never will get both. So I set up the camera, and took a normal shot. Here is how it came out:

Please click on the photo to see the full sized result. What you clearly see is that the scene outside the window is considerably over-exposed. Note how the colors outside are almost completely lost as the brightness nears the maximum that the camera can record. At the same time, the room is dark, and again in the dark the colors the colors are similarly indistinguishable. This is using the camera’s on-board color conversion capability. Normally, I would use a flash with this kind of picture in order to bring the level of light to be nearer that of the outside. But a flash brings its own quality to a picture, drowning out the shadows, and making things look flat.

The camera actually can record more dynamic range than the JPG format can carry. JPG is limited to 8 bits per channel, and my camera records 10 bits per channel, which should be a factor of 4 more range. So I took a single RAW format picture of the scene, and converted it using the same post-processing that I did with the rest of these, only it is a single photograph. It certainly carries more dyniamic range, but the result is decidedly unsatisfying:

Then I took the picture again, with three different exposures, -2, 0, and +2ev. Here was my surprise. This is not enough for this scene. It is clearly better, but still the outside is a bit over exposed, and the interior colors of the couch are noisy. Three pictures was simply not enough. Here is what I got:

OK. I am going to have to go set up again. This time I take 7 different exposures ranging from -6 to +6 in 2EV increments. Very dark to capture the colors outside, to very light to get the colors inside. The result of the combined picture looks like this:

Finally, that is a great shot. Please click on the photo to see the full scale photo. Of course there is a dramatic difference: you can see the colors of the garden outside the window, as well as the details within the room at the same time. This photo has tremendous dynamic range that could not be captured in a single photo. Go back and look at the original.

Isn’t this a dramatic difference? Anyone want to guess how long until camaras exist that will do this automatically?

Hey Bruce! I am your biggest fan. When you make a comment, on workflow, or on photography, I really take it to heart. Your comment sowed the seeds of doubt about whether HDR photography is worth the trouble. Afterall, as a hobbiest I have not really spent much time manually manipulating RAW format pictures. My camera (Canon G6) has a 10 bit per pixel sensor, which gets then compressed to 8 bits per pixel in the JPG. That is potentially 10 f-stops (EV) of dynamic range. Somewhere I found a web page listing the G6 as having a luminosity range of 1:650, which is between 9 and 10 EV. I hear better cameras can get 10 to 11 EV. Maybe, as you say, that is enough. Clearly combining pictures taken +2 EV, and -2 EV could potentially potentially add 3 or 4, giving the total range around 13 or 14 EV. How do I know whether I need the extra range?

How important is this dynamic range, anyway? The human eye records an instantaneous dynamic range of 1:30,000, a range of 1:200,000 if you allow a couple of seconds for the iris adjust, and 1:1,000,000 if you wait 20 minutes for the eyes to adjust to darkness. All of these make the 1:1000 of a camera seem tiny. But how much do you really need?

I set out to take a some photographs to see whether I really need to purchase the Photomatix software, or whether this is just a fad promoted by photo perfectionists. The first picture was a tree in the courtyard of the Fujitsu campus in Sunnyvale. I recorded the pictures in RAW format, and took a large number of different exposures, each about 1 EV apart. I then compared two results: the first is from combining all the different exposures into a single HDR image, and then tone mapped that back to a JPG. The second was by taking a single RAW image, the one at the “correct” exposure, converting that to HDR, and tonemapping with the exact same setting.  (I am too lazy to link this photo, sorry.)

First thing I have to say is that the results with the RAW image were dramatically more stunning than doing the manipulation from the JPG generated by the camera. I will certainly do more of this in the future.  I have to say, on this first photo, the results of the single exposure, and multiple exposure were essentially the same! The colors were great, the picture clear, and the dark and highlights were without problem. What I found out is that this first photo did not need the high dynamic range. I think that will be the case in many pictures, just as Bruce suggested.

The second picture, however, convinced me to get the software. This is a picture of a fountain in the sun which is very bright, but includes the dark side of a tree, as well as a lot of dark details on the building in the background. I took a total of 7 different exposure settings in RAW format. (Since then I have found that it is unnecessary to take so many, but this is how I learned that.) Again, I processed two examples: the combined HDR, and an HDR made from the single best exposure. I was careful to use the exact same tome mapping for the output. This is a little unfair because you might do the tone mapping a little different for the single exposure, to bring out the blue in the sky a bit more, but I wanted to be able to exactly compare the results.

First of all, here are the two photographs, reduced to fit on the page. The first is the single exposure, which the second is the photo made from combining 7 exposures. Please see the links at the bottom of the blog entry for links to the full size (7.1 Megapixel) images.

Most of the picture appear the same at this scale. You notice mostly that the sky is bluer in the combined exposure photo, because the single exposure tended to wash out the color a bit because the sky was a little over exposed. But the trees, the grass, the fountain, the buildings look pretty much the same.

The fountain is in the sun, and it is very bright. The biggest difference between these images is seen when you look closely at the fountain:

The difference here is dramatic! The fountain was bright enough that it was completely overexposed in the single exposure shot. The multiple exposure shot, however, used information from the darker pictures to get a clearer impression of the fountain.

How about the dark places? Maybe the original single exposure picture was simply overexposed. This also shows a dramatic difference:

Notice how speckled the rafters appear in the single exposure image. This is noise that is appearing at the dark end of the luminosity range. The multiple exposure image is dramatically cleaner, because the image information for this part of the picture was taken from photos that were otherwise over exposed. Notice in the multiple exposure image you can see some wood grain in the front most board, and how much clearer the details in the vines in the background are.

What this demonstrates is that for this picture, the single exposure could not capture both the bright areas, and the dark areas at the same time, but the image made from combining multiple exposures did this beautifully. That was enough for me, and I purchased Photomatix this morning.

I took these pictures with 1 EV spacing, requiring 5 or 7 images. In hindsight, it should be fine to use 2 EV spacing, and in general 3 exposures will probably do. This will be much more convenient since the camera will do exposure bracketing with 3 photos, spaced 2 EV settings apart, so that all the pictures can be taken without touching the camera, which will reduce the chance of shifting the camera direction. This should be fine for all but the most extreme shots.

If you would like to compare the complete photographs, here are links. Please keep in mind they are big, so you probably want to right-click-save-as to avoid downloading multiple times.

• Single Exposure, 7.0 MB JPG
• Multiple Exposure, 6.1 MB JPG

The combined HDR image was 23.8 MB, and each of the 7 RAW images were 8.8 MB. These pictures were taken on March 15 2007, at about 3:30 in the afternoon, on the Fujitsu campus in Sunnyvale.

A few days ago I found out about High Dynamic Range (HDR) photographs. A short search on the web will bring you lots of information, but somehow I have been living just fine completely oblivious to HDR.

The threory behind HDR is that film (and digital cameras) have a particular dynamic range that they are sensitive to. Light intensity values that fall outside of this range, tend to get smashed together and “washed out”. Yo can see this easily if you take a picture of someone with the sky behind them, but set the exposure so that you can see their face. The sky will often appear completely white and lack any detail. Similarly, if you take a picture of a room, often the windows will appear completely washed out without being able to see what was outside. The same thing happens on the dark end of the intensity spectrum: dark details will completely disappear into the rest of the black areas.

Since cameras are limited, the way to get a HDR image is to take three (or more) images with varying exposure. You take one that is approximately “right” and you take one that is obviously overexposed, and another obviously underexposed. The interesting thing is that these over and under exposed pictures contain additional details that are not present in the “right” picture. Today, March 11, was a bright and sunny day and we decided we had nothing better to do than take a Sunday drive through the countryside. I took a number of such “multiple exposure” photos.

When I home, I downloaded the free trial version of Photomatix from a company called HDR Soft just to try out this HDR process. Does it really work? Does it make photos that are “better” than normal photos. You can be the judge below.

From my point of view, it is “interesting”. An adjective I normally avoid because of its ambiguity. There is no doubt that you can see more in the picture. There are more details. The colors seem to jump out at you, and I have to admit that when I was standing at the original scene, the color were overwhelming. In some sense the result matches an emotional impression. At the same time, the HDR images look fake and unreal. They look like “art” and not “reality”. Is it just that I am so used to seeing photographs with the limitations that normal photography brings?

To appreciate the process, you need to see the three original photos, and then the combined results. Please note, the result is somewhat grainy, which I assume is because I compressed the originals to JPG before combining. The guides say to use RAW of TIFF mode in the camera, and it makes sense because the JPG smoothing will in certain ways distort the actual colors of the pixels, and then when you compare them across three pictures, there ma be some problems. Next time I will try will RAW mode to avoid problems.

Here are the original three pictures.

These are read into Photomatix and combined into a single HDR image. The image looks funny on the screen until you apply a Tone Mapping. The result is an image that can be saved as a JPG file. IT looks like this:

What do you think? THe free version of the software puts the “watermarks” on the photo, so please ignore those until I decide whether this is a worthwhile process. It is certainly an amazing transformation of the photo. You can see the detail in the wooden siding of the barn, while at the same time the sky appears blue. Sometimes I think the colors are a bit too saturated, but then it was a beautiful day which was constantly impressing the eyes with color.

Here is another picture of some houses in Aromas, California:

And here is the combined photo, which clearly shows the sky at the same time as the trees.

Comments?

I heard a funny rumor today: someone heard that the OMG was buying the WfMC in order to put an end to XPDL. I am sure the OMG folks find this just as amusing as the WfMC members do. And I can assure you that no such thing is happening, probably more due to OMG unwillingness to shell out the money than WfMC unwillingness to accept the cash.

It has been a long while since I have made an entry here. We have all been busy, but now that the holiday season is over, there are more serious subjects to attend to.

On Feb 5, 2007, we are holding yet another WfMC Workflow Tutorial Day to be held here in Silicon Valley. How ironic it is that this is the first time in North America! We developed this material last summer, and presented it in September in Mainz Germany, and then in October in Tokyo, and November in Taipei and Singapore. There were sellout crowds at every event — which, to be honest, being a highly technical topic, is a much smaller audience than a rock concert. Now, with the material honed by the rigors of the road, we are bringing the show home where it all began so many year ago. OK, it began a lot of other places as well. Still, it is a day long event discussing existing BPM and workfow standards, and how they relate to BPM technology today. It is a must for those serious about making their business operations more efficient. More information is available at: http://www.wfmc.org/events/BPM_in_practice.htm and you can get the PDF brochure at http://www.wfmc.org/images/BPM_in_Practice07.pdf.

Hope to see you there.