(re)Learning Guitar
i first learned guitar when I was in high school. I didn't so much learn guitar as learn that there is a big difference between wanting to be a rock star and wanting to become a rock star, but some of it did stick. It's been kind of a love hate thing over the years, as expectations consistently outpaced my devotion to practice, but every so often I'd get back into it with renewed interest, relearn some old licks, maybe a few new ones, and then put the guitar back in the case until next time. But having kids changes things, and now I've got little girls who like to dance and sing - why not learn some folk tunes for them to enjoy? Plus it would be nice to ge

Export data - useful for estimating market size
In my recent article about estimating market size, I mentioned that one tip is to determine if you really need to know an exact market size, or whether you just need to know if it is big enough. This was exactly the situation when a member called asking about a particular equipment category. They were considering a new product effort, but needed to know whether the market was large enough. While he started out asking for exact numbers, once I provided some useful export data relative to the product cateogry he was able to ma

New data available: Construction, Agriculture Equipment Export Data
We've now put a few new products on the AEM store - namely our Global Markets Export reports.These cover construction equipment exports and agricultural equipment exports Construction Global Markets Report $59/quarter – This report contains US export data for a number of construction related items, including: Top 5 countries receiving US exportsEmerging marketsTotal exports & imports by regionTop 10 countries US Imports equipment fromTo

What should SCIP do?
A while back Ellen asked me to suggest what scip should do. I've thought about this for quite a while, and until I read SCIP's mission and goals, I really couldn't articulate what was wrong. Having read them, now I can. When I read SCIP's mission and goals, it's clear to me that there's not much focus on increasing value for members or their employers. Instead the focus is on increasing recognition for SCIP and CI. The problem is that without value there isn't anything to

Yep, blogging will make a comeback
Via Rick Klau  I learned that Don Loeb  thinks that blogging will make a comeback. I agree, for more reasons than Don cites. Yes Twitter will spawn some new bloggers, but I think we will also see a researgance of old bloggers. I, like many I suspect, was caught up in the social media fervor and ditched a lot of blogging time to play with facebook and spend more time on linkedin. Now I look back and think I might have put that effort to better use. I'm going refocusing on blogging more. Why? I own the content. No spelunki