Next Monday the Glass Association of North America’s (GANA) Fall Conference kicks off with a meeting with PGC International (that group’s co-located meeting runs through September 1). There seem to be a number of highlights on this year’s conference. Among them is a presentation by Stephen Harty of BNIM Architects on “Master Planning for Greensburg, KS.” If you’re not familiar with this town’s story, after being leveled by an EF5 tornado in May 2007, the community decided to rebuild and make Greensburg a model green town for the future. It’s a really forward-thinking attitude and I, for one, can’t wait to hear more about how glass figures into the town’s “greening.” In addition, Kansas Governor Mark Parkinson will be at the conference to speak on “Emerging Energy Technologies and Government Support/Demand.” Gov. Parkinson’s talk on September 3 will be just one of the many highlights of the Fall Conference’s energy seminars sponsored by Solar Glazing magazine.
Speaking of the magazine, if you haven’t visited our http://www.solarglazingmag.com/ site lately, you’ll want to keep checking back for daily updates to newly released products and stories in the consumer press related to this field. In addition, there are several solar events coming up that we’ll be following closely on our site in the weeks ahead. (And starting next week, just in time for the Fall Conference, you’ll be able to visit the site to sign up early for the standalone Solar Glazing magazine, coming in 2010!)
Among the recent stories posted on the site was one today for the U.S. Department of Energy’s annual Solar Decathlon, coming up again October 9-13 and 15-18 on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. According to the event website, the Solar Decathlon is an international collegiate competition in which student teams compete to design, build and operate completely solar-powered houses that incorporate building-integrated photovoltaics. There were some really exciting projects included last year and now that solar energy is such a hot topic for our energy, I have no doubt a lot of unique new products and designs will be on the table for the upcoming event. If you know your company’s products will be a part of one of the houses under construction, let me know so we can be sure to include it in our coverage.
Monday, August 24, 2009
Monday, August 17, 2009
Busy Week Ahead
A few weeks ago I received a particularly nice comment on our recent “Secret Shopper” article that ran in the July USGlass. A reader down in Fort Worth commented that the details in the article proved helpful to him (the biggest compliment I could hope to get), and he extended an invitation to come visit his new 12,000-square-foot retail showroom. I was glad to know that the article proved inspiring to a few other showroom owners out there, especially since the kind folks at ABC Glass & Mirror were such good sports about letting me come in and share their showroom with the glass world at large. If there’s anyone else out there who would like to share what makes their showroom great, and get tips for improving the rest, drop me a line and I’ll add you to my list.
I’m also making plans to do a little unofficial secret shopping pretty soon here. You see, this very afternoon I’m moving into a new house. While I’m eagerly looking to leave my personality on it by swapping out paint colors and carpet, I was surprised to learn that my significant other’s first project involves replacing the ancient, heavy and largely fogged sliding glass door in the den with a fresh, new, easily opened patio door (you’d think I’d be looking at the doors and windows first, right?). So if your glass shop gets a call for an estimate on the cost of a patio door, make sure your customer service is top-notch as it could be for our Industry Outlook department; Virginia-area glass retailers, keep your aisles clean as you may be subject to some secret shopping soon!
On another note, aside from the excitement of this move, this week will also be a busy one because our company, Key Communications, is holding its annual sales meeting. It’s a chance for us editors to share with our terrific team of sales reps all of the changes and improvements we’re making to our various publications in 2010, in addition to reinvigorating our entire team for the year ahead. I’m sure your company holds similar events, and I’d love to hear what you do for your sales team and staff to get them prepared and amped up for new products or company changes. And if you’re interested in getting a copy of USGlass magazine’s 2010 media kit, drop me a line and I’ll add you to that list.
I’m also making plans to do a little unofficial secret shopping pretty soon here. You see, this very afternoon I’m moving into a new house. While I’m eagerly looking to leave my personality on it by swapping out paint colors and carpet, I was surprised to learn that my significant other’s first project involves replacing the ancient, heavy and largely fogged sliding glass door in the den with a fresh, new, easily opened patio door (you’d think I’d be looking at the doors and windows first, right?). So if your glass shop gets a call for an estimate on the cost of a patio door, make sure your customer service is top-notch as it could be for our Industry Outlook department; Virginia-area glass retailers, keep your aisles clean as you may be subject to some secret shopping soon!
On another note, aside from the excitement of this move, this week will also be a busy one because our company, Key Communications, is holding its annual sales meeting. It’s a chance for us editors to share with our terrific team of sales reps all of the changes and improvements we’re making to our various publications in 2010, in addition to reinvigorating our entire team for the year ahead. I’m sure your company holds similar events, and I’d love to hear what you do for your sales team and staff to get them prepared and amped up for new products or company changes. And if you’re interested in getting a copy of USGlass magazine’s 2010 media kit, drop me a line and I’ll add you to that list.
Monday, August 10, 2009
Online Pros and Cons
Late last week I got a phone call from Integrity Glassworks owner Linda Medine warning me that she’d twice this month been contacted by e-mail scammers. Here at USGlass we’ve been focusing so much lately on the positives of the Internet that this was the perfect reminder that there are a lot of things out there to be cautious of. If you haven’t read that story, I’d encourage you to check it out, and let me know if you’ve run into any request from scammers in the last few months so that we can let others in the industry what to watch out for.
Speaking of those positives, I want to take a second once again to congratulate those winners of the Best of the Web contest we held for the August issue of USGlass. (Those winners were announced as part of our July USGNN.com Newscast.) This is the second year we’ve run this contest and I was pleased not only at the large number of entries we received but the fact that some of those sites that were nominated last year had already been updated for this year’s contest. Today, more than ever, a web page is a first point-of-contact for consumers and an unattractive, difficult-to-navigate page might as well be a “closed” sign for many consumers. Personally, I spend a ton of time online and one of my biggest pet peeves is a slow-to-load web page. A search for glass on yahoo.com brings up 953,000,000 returns, so if your site is slow to load due to flashy graphics, then I’m going elsewhere for the information I need.
It was also interesting to note the number of sites that are branching out into other forms of online communications—including blogs, Facebook pages, tweets, video and more. We have a few updates in that area as well. I have offered my first tweets in the last week and I’m hoping that this will be just one more way in which to encourage you readers out there to get involved. I’ll try and keep this line of communication flowing with reminders about upcoming editorial focuses and deadlines, upcoming events and major announcements. You can start following us at twitter.com/usglass – and I hope you do so I have some new tweets of my own to follow.
Speaking of those positives, I want to take a second once again to congratulate those winners of the Best of the Web contest we held for the August issue of USGlass. (Those winners were announced as part of our July USGNN.com Newscast.) This is the second year we’ve run this contest and I was pleased not only at the large number of entries we received but the fact that some of those sites that were nominated last year had already been updated for this year’s contest. Today, more than ever, a web page is a first point-of-contact for consumers and an unattractive, difficult-to-navigate page might as well be a “closed” sign for many consumers. Personally, I spend a ton of time online and one of my biggest pet peeves is a slow-to-load web page. A search for glass on yahoo.com brings up 953,000,000 returns, so if your site is slow to load due to flashy graphics, then I’m going elsewhere for the information I need.
It was also interesting to note the number of sites that are branching out into other forms of online communications—including blogs, Facebook pages, tweets, video and more. We have a few updates in that area as well. I have offered my first tweets in the last week and I’m hoping that this will be just one more way in which to encourage you readers out there to get involved. I’ll try and keep this line of communication flowing with reminders about upcoming editorial focuses and deadlines, upcoming events and major announcements. You can start following us at twitter.com/usglass – and I hope you do so I have some new tweets of my own to follow.
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