Michael Ference Fluid Power Marketing

We as a staff at Fluid Power World are very proud of our event, the Fluid Power Technology Conference, held at MSOE in Milwaukee and held last week.  We had many exhibitor/sponsors, excellent sessions, and great networking. One of the sessions that I am particularly proud to have presented was our opening keynote session on Wednesday titled "Women in Fluid Power" moderated by our newly promoted Chief Editor, Mary Gannon. The panel consisted of four professional Women in Fluid Power including Celine Cabana, Technical Account Manager, FD-GROUPS America; Rachel Schmidt, Application Engineer ISO 9001 Administrator, Elwood Fluid Power; Taryn West, V.P. K.R. West Co.; and Caryes AllanV.P. Higginson Equipment.  They all did a great job of discussing their roles in fluid power and some of the considerations for getting to where they are today. My big takeaway from the discussion is this:  We all face barriers in our professionals careers whether they are real or perc...

I have been too busy to post the past few days because of all of the activity at the 2018 Fluid Power Technology Conference at MSOE.  We got off to a great start on Monday with two great pre-conference sessions titled Basic Hydraulics and Advanced Hydraulics. The actual conference kicked off on Tuesday with a keynote presentation by Austin Ramirez of HUSCO International. Our attendance and our exhititor participation are both increased from last year and lots of enthusiasm has been shown the first two days of the event.  There have been 13 technical presentations done from our two stages so far with another 13 scheduled for today.  We will kick off with Women in Fluid Power with an excellent panel of fluid power professionals. More to come.

The National Fluid Power Association NFPA, wrapped up its regional meeting series this week with the Chicago area meeting held at Moraine Valley Community College in Palos Hills, IL.  For more information about 2018 regional meetings please visit their  website .  It was a very nice event with two excellent speakers. Tamima Farooqui is the Job Resource Specialist at the college and she gave a very thorough overview on what kinds of jobs technical students are seeking and how they can best assimilate into the workforce.  She gave some background on the type of training and counseling they receive at Moraine Valley.   The second speaker, Neil Barker, Associate Professor of Integrated Systems Technology furthered the notion of a diverse workforce.  He gave some great insights into the technical training and career aspirations of their technical students.  Later, Neil gave a tour of their new fluid power lab. Near the end of her presentation, Tam...