Hi Jim; I hope you had a restful and happy July 4th long weekend.
So sorry to hear about Ed's stressful family circumstances [ Ed. Note: See LGMI Dept.] and his related resignation. My sincerest sympathies for him and his family in their time of crisis.
Our LGMI initiative to try helping the industry adopt 21st Century technologies needs every enthusiastic contributor we can find, so we surely will miss his enthusiasm and leadership. Knowing how much our techno-allergic industry could benefit from the ideas just our limited group of thinkers and dreamers has come up with, it may be more crucial for LGMI gaining some momentum if we can figure out how to get just a few ideas taken seriously. With Ed's background I was hoping he could persuade some of the upper mill management people we need to interest in LGMI ideas and innovations to provide any industry benefits.
Thinking back to our January conference, I worry that even if we presented compelling cases for LGMI innovations at TAPPI conferences for papermakers or engineers, they'd still not gain any traction on their technical merits. On the other hand, they probably would be interested if there's some commercial benefit for them. Congratulations getting Dr. Brogdon involved. It's definitely optimistic for such a capable and esteemed person to offer to help LGMI and those of us who'd love nothing better than to help the industry succeed. Perhaps he has experience or ideas for finding appropriate commercial 'receptors/adopters' of innovations or improvements for purely selfish commercial reasons.
I respect and appreciate your patience, perseverance and dedication to providing folks like me with a some hope. (Are our national political leaders really so inept?)
Enjoy the rest of the summer.
Best regards,
Dave Bennett
Mahwah, New Jersery, USA
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Folks, see the comments on last week's column on "Junk Mail" over in the "What do you think?" department. However, in a somewhat related vein, perhaps you receive an email from another publication. We'll not mention its name, but it touts itself as being leading edge. If you received it this week, you might want to take a look at what was said there, and then look at this column from "Nip Impressions" which is nearly ten months old: