Sunday, October 11, 2015

Looking for Most Valuable

As we approach the end of the year I have begun my process of figuring out who the industry MVP will be.  Previous winners were Tracy Rogers of Quanex and the entire CR Laurence organization. 2015 looks to be much harder as again there is no shortage of great candidates.  What I look for is a person or company that has made an impact on our industry.  Be it technical, marketing, codes, leadership and so on.  So I am gathering my list and if you believe there’s someone deserving in your opinion please shoot me an e-mail.  I get around quite a bit but not everywhere so I may miss a potential candidate.  I will note some of the finalists in November and then unveil and honor the winner in December.  Thank you.

Elsewhere…

--  Once again enjoyed the Twitter coverage supplied by Glass Magazine, this time from the Vitrum show in Italy.  Great pictures and details including a neat shot of what it looks like inside a working tempering oven.  Overall it looked like an interesting show in regards to some cutting edge equipment.  And speaking of machinery, can that sector be any hotter right now?  It is surely a good time to be in that world.  Congrats to those folks who had to really hold their breath through the tight times a few years ago.

--  Have you seen the wild glass bridge in China?   Thanks to friends Evan Otruba of Binswanger and Rick Shaw of Solar Seal for bringing me up to speed on this.  The 984-foot glass suspension bridge is something to see, and it made even bigger news this week when a tourist dropped a metal travel mug and cracked one of the superficial exterior lites of glass.  As those of us in the industry know, it’s not a big deal, but for the mainstream media it’s cause for a major story.

--  It is October and that means the NFL breaks out its annual Pinkwashing campaign. This is the time where every player, coach and official wears a multitude of pink to make us aware that they care about breast cancer.  The league also sells all of this pink gear with “proceeds” going to charity.  Sadly and it’s been like this for years they are just donating just a tiny bit of money to actually combat this heinous disease.  After it’s all broken out, around 8% of proceeds of the pink gear sold goes to the American Cancer Society and none of it goes towards research.  Yes that tiny sliver of cash goes towards “awareness” which is a joke given that the last thing society needs in this effort is awareness.  What IS needed is research and a cure…. I just can’t stand that every October this sham of campaign goes on, and the NFL gets richer and we remain no closer to any breakthroughs in cancer world.  We treat cancer the same way in 2015 that we did in 1980.  That’s insane.   In addition, good charities that need the funding suffer because of the overall power of something like this- that unintended consequence makes it hurt even more.

--  Last this week the GANA Fall Conference takes place in San Antonio.  I won’t be there but I do look forward to hearing about what goes on and the discussions that arise.  

LINKS of the WEEK

--  The end of an era library wise…

--  Interesting story on baby names, tradition, family, and money.

--  In this day and age, these wedding favors are not well thought out.  Cute though… but still. 

VIDEO of the WEEK

The latest Steve Jobs movie is coming out soon… not sure if I will see that or not… but Conan O’Brien decided to create a trailer for what would be a hilarious movie… if you treated life of Michael Dell (of Dell Computers) like everyone does Steve Jobs.  The result is comical…


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