Award Winners!

I was very excited to see the latest round of Glass Magazine Awards announced and more deserving companies get recognized.  These are the industries most prestigious awards and there’s no doubt the judges must of had a very difficult time choosing.  A couple of winners I wanted to recognize…  the Most Innovative Energy Efficient Glass Project really excited me because the mix of products and companies was “interesting” to me, but then knowing that the tremendous people from Architectural Glass & Aluminum were involved made sense.  Whatever they touch usually does turn to gold... or in this case- green.  Was happy to see the folks from Pleotint win Most Innovative Commercial Window.  You know me I bang the drum hard for dynamic glazing and yet another piece of evidence that this product segment is going to be very hot. 

I must also say that the Shower Enclosure winner from Met-tec was pretty mind blowing.  That is one very intense shower set up.  When GGI’s new website launched, I noted the great look right here on the blog, nice to see the judges agreeing with me.  I had not seen PPG’s Visualizer yet, so that is now on my list of things to do.   Overall our industry really looked great here, so a hearty congrats to all of the winners… jobs well done!! 

Elsewhere…

There’s still the people portion of the awards to come and you can vote on them now.  This year I am not familiar with any of the folks with the exception of one, so I’ll be reading all of the bios and making my decisions soon.  Please take a few minutes and go vote, these are obviously deserving candidates who were nominated and then made the cut to the best three in their categories.  Congrats to everyone who made it to this point!

Last week I noted how positive things seemed to be out there and some of the reports backed me up… great job addition for construction and best construction spending since September of 2009. Keep it going!

The bad side is surely the worry that our industry does have a severe lack of skilled labor.  Between companies cutting back during the slow period and the fact that what we do is very difficult (and dangerous in some points) we do have a massive worry out there on the horizon.  One that I have chatted about on here a few times but sadly one that does not have an easy answer.

I did go see “Man of Steel” recently… and I thought it was “OK”- a little too long and too much un-needed pieces for my liking.  But once again I do have to laugh that every time one of these hero movies visits a town (in the movie), the local glaziers have to rejoice because they break every piece of glass around.  So whomever is the glass guy in Smallville, KS.. what a great business you would have!

Last this week… Just a programming note- no blog next week from me… going to give my fingers a rest.  See you again week of July 28^th, unless major news breaks of course…

LINKS of the WEEK

Deep fried everything…. Including bacon…

The Cleveland Browns obituary story....  Not sure if I was the team I’d be thrilled with his crack about being let down.

More tough times with the Chinese stock market.  Worth watching to see if and when this affects North America.

VIDEO of the WEEK

It’s summer… and time for many folks to hit the road for a getaway... so why not remember with a trailer to a classic movie.. VACATION!!