For the September 2010 issue of Today’s Machining World I did a short interview with Jim Chiodo, a Tea Party leader in Holland Michigan (I also quoted him in Tuesday’s Swarfblog). According to Chiodo there are a lot of misconceptions about what the Tea Party actually is. He suggested I ask the following questions to readers to find out what they think the term “Tea Party” means. 1. Are you a member of the Tea Party? 2. What do you think the Tea Party represents? 3. If you think you know what it represents, what is your source of info?…
Author: Noah Graff
By Lloyd Graff I just spent a week doing the most inefficient, labor-intensive, stupidly expensive, appallingly large carbon footprint use of my time I can think of. I schlepped to California and knocked on doors. It was one of the most satisfying weeks I’ve spent in 10 years. Every face-to-face call I made was productive. Each client and potential client I met with spent more time with me and was more open than I could’ve anticipated. I realized that old school active listening face-to-face was still magical. Two of the clients I visited were Tony Maglica and Ray Fish, who…
By Lloyd Graff This weekend I’m celebrating my 40th wedding anniversary with my wife Risa. We’re spending the weekend in Chicago, having dinner with our children tonight and catching a play on Saturday. Does anybody have a suggestion for a unique and memorable way to celebrate a milestone occasion like a 40th? My wife is not into helicopters or blimps. We are foodies to some degree but we both have some dietary restrictions. Cubs are out of town.
By Noah Graff New research is showing that lucky charms may actually improve a person’s performance when doing certain activities. A recent article in the Wall Street Journal reported on a study conducted by the University of Cologne in which participants on a putting green were told they were playing with a “lucky ball.” The people using the “lucky balls” sank 6.4 putts out of 10, nearly two more putts, on average, than those who weren’t told the ball was lucky—a 35 percent improvement. However, this phenomenon only applies to instances in which a person actually has some control over…
By Lloyd Graff Have you ever wondered how a movie gets made? This is the inside scoop on that process, right now. Mary Ethridge has written several pieces for Today’s Machining World, including the cover story “Who’s Eating off Mary’s Plate?” about the history of the metal plate in her wrist. She lives in Akron, Ohio, and keeps up with the local scene. So when the Soap Box Derby ran into financial difficulty because the big local sponsor, Levi Strauss, walked away, Mary saw a story worth writing and pitched it to USA Today. USA Today staff reporter Bruce Horovitz…
By Noah Graff I spoke on a panel about the power of social networking and blogs at the Precision Machined Products Association tech conference on Monday. My specific segment was on how best to use videos to promote your business. The presentation seemed well received by our good sized audience, and at the end we fielded some questions. Someone in charge of marketing at a company attending the conference asked us, “How do I justify to my boss the ROI on having a blog?” We all responded by saying that your ROI from a blog isn’t easily quantifiable, yet that…
Brian Pendarvis of Anaheim says he hasn’t felt the recession. His company, Pendarvis Manufacturing grew despite the softening that battered almost everybody else in the machining game. He attributes his success to marketing his job shop on the Web. Brian says he spends about $50,000 a year maintaining his Web site and spreading the word about his company’s capabilities on Yahoo, Google, ThomasNet.com and McCraes. He pays for Google ad words, but just to promote the company within a 100-mile radius of Orange County. His niche is combining fabricating, welding and machining, a combination we don’t see that often as…
Gordon Styles, British owner of Star Prototype China Limited, a high-quality rapid prototyping and rapid manufacturing supplier in China, wrote the following response to the April 19, swarfblog, “Is China the Next Enron?” China as a subject is far more complex than most people realize who do not live here. The term “Middle Class” is unhelpful in China. There are just people. Many have no money; some have money; a few have a lot of money. I say it like that because that is how it is said in Chinese: you qian ren – has money person. It is generally accepted…
The collaboration of DMG and MORI SEIKI is moving along rapidly. They now share a magnificent showroom warehouse in Hoffman Estates, Illinois. They are sharing staff, with MORI SEIKI taking the lead on marketing in North America. The companies have taken five percent stakes in one another. MORI SEIKI’s CEO Dr. Mori is on DMG’s board and DMG’s CEO Dr. Kapitza is on MORI SEIKI’s board. The decision on whether to build machines in the U.S. is still a topic of discussion with nothing finalized. ************* If President Obama appoints a Catholic or Jew to the Supreme Court to replace the…
By Lloyd Graff I just read a nice article in the March Atlantic Monthly by Kayt Sukel, a solo mother (Dad’s in Iraq) who took her three-year-old son Chet, to Petra, Jordan, for a vacation. Her point in the article was that an adventurous vacation, even for a young woman and son in an Arab country is worth the risk. It brought back memories for me of taking my family to Petra in 1999. Nine people squashed into a minivan, crossing into Israel’s’ West Bank at the Allenby Bridge in Jerusalem, meeting our Palestinian driver and Jordanian guide Osama (we…