As an Editor for a niche industry, one of the things I like to do is keep my eye on what the mainstream business world is talking about. I find it is a great way to stay informed and also to cultivate ideas for gases and welding articles. Well today I stumbled upon an article that I found very interesting.

What CEOs really Want is the name of the article and Frank Kern wrote it for BusinessWeek. It touches on the one quality that American CEOs most commonly identified as important in a prospective job candidate. Surpriingly, it wasn’t work ethic, knowledge, assertiveness or people skills. It was creativity.

Here’s an excerpt from the article, which can be found here.

“There is compelling new evidence that CEOs’ priorities in this area are changing in important ways. According to a new survey of 1,500 chief executives conducted by IBM’s Institute for Business Value (NYSE: IBM – News), CEOs identify “creativity” as the most important leadership competency for the successful enterprise of the future.

Coming out of the worst economic downturn in their professional lifetimes, when managerial discipline and rigor ruled the day, this indicates a remarkable shift in attitude. It is consistent with the study’s other major finding: Global complexity is the foremost issue confronting these CEOs and their enterprises. The chief executives see a large gap between the level of complexity coming at them and their confidence that their enterprises are equipped to deal with it.”

So does that carry over to gases and welding? I would say it does. Not only do customers demand new, creative solutions, but you have to be creative to find new customers as well. What do all of you think? How important is creativity in your industry?

Let me know!

Good morning everyone. I hope your weeks were all outstanding. Before you head off for the weekend, I wanted to make sure all of you knew about the brand-new issue of GAWDA Edge that hit the Web yesterday. It’s a jam-packed issue with articles on several different topics that i think all of you will find relevant.
The cover story for the issue is about the new movie Iron Man 2. For those of you that didn’t know, Lincoln Electric was involved with the production of the movie and several of their machines are used throughout. I saw the movie for last week and it was outstanding. The welding and welding equipment was also featured rather prominently. Kudos to Lincoln for getting the industry out there for the public to see!

That’s not all that’s in this issue, though. It also features an article about creating accountability by Mike Scott. He was one of the recent GAWDA SMC’s most popular speakers. I didn’t get to hear him speak, but I’ve been told he was both “Awesome” and “Amazing.”

This issue also features a photo recap of the SMC that shows many of the association’s young executives in action. Combine that with a piece on spicing up a showroom and following up on a trade show and you’re left with a full issue. So please, take a minute to head over to http://www.gawdaedge.org and give it a look. Then, let me know what you think! Your feedback matters to me.

Have you seen it? I don’t know how many of my readers have taken the opportunity to check it out, but last week GAWDA launched a fantastic new website. The address is still the same, www.gawda.org, but almost everything else has been changed for the better.

The site is an eye-popping yellow page that integrates all the information you could ever need about the association with some of the best available website design and technology. Of course, all of the improvements and updates were designed with one thing in mind—making it easier for the GAWDA membership to participate in the association.

Aside from upgrading the overall look and layout of the page, several other changes were made to the site. For instance, it now features a “Get in the Game” section, the latest industry news headlines and a database of association members. The updated look of the site has bolder graphics and large menus that make the site more user-friendly. It also features more pictures of members and the latest industry news. So if you haven’t checked it out yet, head over to www.gawda.org and check out what your association is up to!

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Hello everyone, I apologize for the slow updates the last couple of weeks, but things have been very busy at the GAWDA Edge HQ. Fear not, though, busy is good and busy means that we’ve come up with some great content that the gases and welding industry should find very useful.

The next issue of the magazine comes out on May 20 and we just went into final production on it today. There’s one article in particular that I thought was pretty neat and I want to share it with you today. I don’t know how many of you have been to the theatre and seen “Iron Man 2” since its release last Thursday, but if you did , you certainly weren’t alone. It was #1 at the box office by more than $100 million over its closest challenger.

What you might not know is that GAWDA member Lincoln Electric Company received some serious screen time on the film. As fans of the franchise know, welding was featured several times. A little over a year ago, production began on Iron Man 2. The producers knew that they wanted to feature welding again, but they wanted to go about it differently. Instead of using the same welding machines that were used in the first film, they decided that something a little more high-tech was in order. Since they had a successful relationship with Lincoln from the first film, the producers gave the company a call. Lincoln suggested using an Electric Power Wave i400 welding power source and a FANUC ARC Mate 100iC robotic arm. The producers liked the idea and made the decision to move forward.

Of course, if a robotic welding arm was going to be used in the film, someone was going to have to program it. That’s where Brian Simons, a robotic programmer with Lincoln’s Automation Application Group, stepped in. “The company sent me to the set to help out with the programming,” says Simons. “In total, I spent about seven days on set over the course of two visits.”

Brian had some very neat experiences during filming and in the next issue of the magazine, we discuss them in depth. So be sure to stop by www.gawdaedge.org on Thursday, May 20 to check out what went down and also be sure to stop by your local theatre to check out your industry in action!