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The weekend after the Fourth of July is always one of my favorites of the summer, because that’s the weekend of the John Deere Classic. I’ve been inviting some of my friends and family into town for the past few years and we always have a good time. Despite a rainy Friday, this year was no different.

Last Wednesday, June 24, Holt Inc. was invited to John Deere Harvester Works for a Gold Key event. After a tour of the factory, the customer buying the product gets to be the first one to start it on the assembly line. The whole event is a neat experience.

There have been some exciting updates from work lately.  Biggest news first—I accepted a promotion yesterday! When I return to the US, I’ll rejoin Deere’s Customer Knowledge Center, where I will be doing data quality analysis. The CKC are a great group of people, and I’m excited to be back on the team. Not only that, but the work pulls in my CS background to a great degree, which is really satisfying.

In lesser news, I received my Indian business cards today, so I’m pretty happy about that. Check it out:

This week’s issue of The Economist includes an article discussing the Illinois economy, including a brief mention of Deere.  Overall, a fairly depressing article, although they say nothing bad about us.

The picture of the president speaking in front of (ahem) some construction equipment makes me think we need to figure out how to get Obama to come speak at a Deere plant. I remember seeing Bush speak at the Harvester Works in January 2002. It was a pretty neat experience for me (and, I’m sure, the other Deere employees lucky enough to be present), especially as I was an intern in my first year of college at the time.

The Satyam Computer Services scandal has been quite interesting to follow from within India. The local papers have considerable coverage dedicated to the events surrounding the company, including the actions of the government and the company’s executives.

Satyam has been described as “India’s Enron” by some commentators and is exposing gaps in not only Indian corporate governance, but also in the processes and reliability of major accounting firms and America's Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (which itself was created in response to the Enron meltdown).

The New York Times published an article describing Satyam’s early start, mentioning that the company’s earliest “large” client was none other than Deere & Company of Moline, Illinois. (Deere veterans tell me that the story’s claim that Satyam’s success with Deere “helped give birth to [India]’s outsourcing industry” might be a bit overblown, as G.E. and others were apparently already well down that road by that time.) It’s crazy to think that in 1991, the ground work for my assignment to India was being laid in Moline while I was learning state capitals and long division.

Of course, I’m sure that my stellar long division skills helped, too…

I saw an interesting article in The Economist’s Technology Quarterly which discusses the use of rubber tracks on military vehicles, and immediately thought of Deere’s new High Speed Dozer.

Thanks to everyone who came into town for the John Deere Classic last weekend. I had a great time hanging out with everyone, and really enjoyed introducing some of my Quad Cities friends to my fraternity brothers.

Deere formally annouced today that the company is establishing a Techology Innovation Center to be located on the campus of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.