Michael Ference Fluid Power Marketing

Just as the old saying goes, It takes a village to raise a child, I contend that it takes a community to make a business professional.  Over the past 43 years, I have been blessed to have many great influences in my career as a business professional.  I would like to acknowledge some of my mentors and coworkers in that community that spans the whole 43 years.  I will mention some of them in the coming posts. First, I acknowledge the late Michael Nassif who hired me to work on Hydraulics & Pneumatics magazine in 1977.  Not only did he hire me but he took me under his wing immediately and looked after me for the next 8 years.  Mike saw the potential in me to be a successful sales rep for H&P and despite my resistance, he finally convinced me to give it a try in 1984 with a small sales territory. I know that I thanked Mike over the years for his confidence in me and his mentoring but I probably never thanked him enough.  He was the biggest influence in my career as sales rep, mark

 On Tuesday, September 29. 2020 our next session of our Fluid Power Technology Conference Virtual Series will take place with Jeremy Drury of IoT Diagnostics presenting. Here is a brief preview of his presentation Attend the FPTC virtual series session on  Tuesday, September 29th, 10AM EST  with  Jeremy Drury, President of IoT Diagnostics! Learn from IoT Diagnostics’ collective decades of experience in Fluid Power to go back to the basics and learn how linking the three fundamental pieces of any IoT journey can quickly realize the expectations we have for this technology. Then, explore applications across 3 critical pieces of fluid power, and how to use the IoT to monitor the health of the heart, blood, and muscle of our systems by looking at hydraulic pumps, lubrication, and power units. See why IoT can be as easy as 1 2 3. After Jeremy’s session, he will be meeting one-on-one with individuals interested in learning more about the solutions offered by IoT Diagnostics.  Once you regist

One feature of our Fluid Power Technology Conference Virtual Series is our Showcase.  It features videos from our sponsors showing their product solutions for many fluid power applications.  During one of our Virtual Series sessions, you will see four navigation buttons on the screen including Home, Stage, Q&A, and Showcase. By clicking on the Showcase, our audience members can access product and capabilities videos from our sponsors and these will remain online for the whole duration of our Virtual Series.  Our next session will take place on September 29, 2020 at 10:00 am EDT.  Our speaker is Jeremy Drury of IoT Diagnostics and he will be addressing the big problem of unplanned downtime and how it can be avoided. You can register for free by following this link .  This will be the seventh session in our Virtual Series and I  invite you attend the presentation by Jeremy and sign up for a one-on-one discussion with him after the session.  We will be sending out more information ab

In 2016, we at Fluid Power World magazine and digital media network created the Fluid Power Technology Conference.  Our intention was to give our advertisers the opportunity to tell their product and solution story to our audience.  It was never intended to compete with big trade shows, but just to give companies an opportunity to tell their story. It worked very well in 2016 through 2019.  In 2020, we have been forced to covert that event into a virtual series and that has worked very well also! Here is a link where you can view our first five sessions:   LINK   It has been successful because it gives our advertisers an opportunity to connect with customers and prospects through a multi-media package.  The event is presented live and on-demand through a platform called Hopin.  The 45-minute presentation is followed by a question and answer session. After the sessions, our audience has a chance to review the solutions offered by all of our sponsors in a special section that remains con

I would like to draw your attention to an article in the August issue of Fluid Power World starting on page 24.  Here is a link to our digital edition August Issue .  This is an article in a continuing series titled Hydraulic Symbology 205 by Josh Cosford.  This particle article discusses the symbols for pumps. These symbols have been essential in the design of fluid power systems for a long time and they remain that way today.  Regardless of the platform used to apply these symbols, they have been the foundation of systems design. You can find other chapters in this series in the pages of Fluid Power World and in our digital edition.

 We are happy to announce our next session of the Fluid Power Technology Conference Virtual Series  taking place next Tuesday and presented by DMIC. DMIC is located in Buffalo, NY and serves OEMs, System Designers, and MRO in a wide variety of applications including mobile and industrial industries.  Our speakers from DMIC will be Don Couchman,  Steve Dellos, and Gregg Panborn.  They will be sharing the many solutions provided to industry from DMIC. Here is a link  that you can follow to register for free for this session.  Each presentation lasts about 45 minutes in duration and is followed by a question and answer session.  We encourage our audience to formulate questions during the presentation and ask them during the Q&A where they can join live on screen. Our Virtual Series continues every other Tuesday ad 2:00 EDT/EST through the remainder of 2020 and will continue into 2021.  At some point, we will return to the live exhibition and conference stage.  You can also find all of

Being in the workforce for as long as I have, Labor Day has always been a special holiday to me.  It is a day where we step back and take a look at all of our efforts the during the previous year to make a living. Work is an honorable activity and I am blessed to have been engaged in making a living in the media industry for fluid power.  I have often considered myself as much a part of the fluid power industry as I have been part of the media business.  Even through our current troubled times, this remains a robust business and I thank all of my customers who have made my job possible.  I wish my customers a special Good Labor Day! To all who labor, no matter what profession you are in, Happy Labor Day!  Relax and enjoy because you have earned this day off!

Our Fluid Power Technology Conference Virtual Series continues today at 2:00 EDT and our presenter and sponsor will be Panolin America, Inc. and Brandon Richords CEO of Panolin will be our speaker' Where and when should you use environmentally acceptable fluids? In this session from Panolin, attendees will learn just what EALs (environmentally acceptable lubricants) are and the many types that are available in the marketplace. Brandon Richards will provide an overview of PANOLIN EALs, which are synthetic high-performance lubricants based on fully saturated esters. Learn about the benefits of these fluids over mineral-based lubricants, such as longevity and significantly less environmental impact. He will also cover the governmental regulations driving their development globally. Speaker: Brandon Richards , CEO of PANOLIN America, Inc. Sponsored by:   Here is a link for you to register , you still have time.  See you there!

 See our August issue of Fluid Power World magazine for all of these features.  Our cover story is on hydraulics in mining equipment.  Hydraulics make the equipment in Mining both safe and reliable.  Eliminating downtime and ensuring safe operations are to big benefits that hydraulics offer to the mining equipment industry. Follow this link  for our digital issue found on our Fluid Power World website .  You can read our issues anytime online and subscribe to our digital and print issues too.  This will give you a regular source of fluid power information provided by our contributors and editors.