Energy Efficiency Past and Future, Another Great Hire, and Following all of the Shows

As most of you know I am a geek when it comes to energy efficiency and the products in our industry that can improve that process.  So when I saw Katy Devlin’s blog last week I was truly excited.  Actually according to my son what I did was I “marked out” which comes from the wrestling world when you get overly excited about something you know and hope will happen.  Anyway, the details of Katy’s blog and the focus on energy efficiency and the timeline of the many great companies looking to disrupt that space was a breath of fresh air.  I believe we are still at just the start of the process.  We have a ton of innovation in the pipelines and ready to come.  So you can look at where we were but just get ready because we are going is truly something to behold.

Elsewhere…

--  I think these are the dog days of blogging. Not much news happening, but it will pick up with glasstec coming up. 

--  My day was made the other day when I saw this news on a former co-worker of mine.  Dan Wagner was recently named Vice President and General Manager of Global Door Controls.  I had the honor of working with Dan for several years and I hold him in the highest regard.  I am sure he will do a fantastic job in his new position, as he has done everywhere he has ever been.

--  I am convinced that if you wanted to and had the money/time to do so, you could attend an industry related function for every week of the year.  Our landscape is so packed with seminars, conferences, shows, roundtables, squaretables, it’s absolutely incredible.  So it brings to mind three questions… how do you decide on which event is more worthy than another and how can you still follow the action and information without attending.  On the decision of which ones to attend, time really has to be taken to determine if the audience and reach is relevant to your business.  For instance there are quite a few events that promise “architectural interaction” but they all can’t deliver at a high level and sometimes the smaller ones turn out to be better.  You truly need to research who’s there and the conference schedule before deciding.  As for following along, thanks to electronic and social media, it’s never been easier.  This past week there was an event in New York that I was able to follow via Twitter and really I felt like I got a good feel for the discussion and flavor of the event.  While NOTHING will ever replace face to face networking, at least from an education standpoint being able to follow along from afar is truly doable in our current society. 

--  I happened to go through the San Diego airport last week and again noticed the glass. The usage inside was decent, but it was the outside, especially some of the curtain walls that really were impressive.  Clean design and the glass and aluminum looked tremendous.  I know (from looking at the spacer band) that Viracon supplied the glass but no idea on the framing and who installed- so whomever did those jobs (and Viracon too) congrats to you.  It looks amazing.  Unfortunately my picture does NOT do it justice!

 The up and downs of the construction forecasts continued.  Non residential construction only added 3,200 jobs last month which was considered modest growth. Meanwhile the Dodge Index slipped for the 3^rd month in a row.  While that index is up 8% year over year, this little trend is starting to concern.

Last this week… normally I would put this in my LINKS of the WEEK but it’s a pretty cool look inside the McDonald’s Monopoly promotion going on right now.  It is amazing the how heavily the odds are against you. 

LINKS of the WEEK

--  This makes me sad.  The end of Saturday morning cartoons.  The world continues to change.  Wow.

--  Wild and interesting story for those journalism/grammar lovers and lawyers too.  All over the word “how”

--  I LOVE dogs.. and this story is amazing.  There are both awful and great people in this world and this story shows both.

VIDEO of the WEEK

Not the best Video of the week… but if you are a fight fan, especially MMA, this one could interest you.  A format in Russia with 2 fights going at once and so on… a little crazy for sure.  Will be curious to see if this ends up happening in any of the North American promotions.