Products--and productivity

Arlyn S. Powell, Jr.

Chief Editor

The editorial mission statement of Cabling Installation & Maintenance identifies technology, standards, and products as the three keys to the cabling industry, so when we on the staff think about ways to improve the magazine, it should not come as a surprise that we look at these three areas first. Recently, both in focus groups attended by our readers and in discussions with manufacturers, we have heard that it would be helpful if we could provide more product information.

One response to this suggestion was to launch Cabling Product News, the tabloid-style publication polybagged with this issue of Cabling Installation & Maintenance. Cabling Product News will be a quarterly supplement to the magazine. Its focus will be new products and how you can use them to increase your productivity. In it you will find news about companies expanding their product lines or launching new ones, information about recent standards activities that affect product development, and stories about products based on a new technology or that are otherwise innovative in ways that will help you work better, faster, and more intelligently. Cabling Product News will also be packed with briefer write-ups of new product launches.

We hope in Cabling Product News to do justice to the many new products and the reams of product information that we receive but do not have room for in the parent magazine, Cabling Installation & Maintenance. We plan to do more than uncritically present new-product information, however. For this information to be useful, it must bear on your day-to-day activities, making your tasks easier or your work less time-consuming or your purchases less expensive. The filter that we apply to each new product we write up, then, will be the question: Will this information make our readers more productive? We hope it will.

Cabling Installation & Maintenance appoints Editorial Board

I am pleased to announce the appointment of the first members of Cabling Installation & Maintenance`s Editorial Board, an advisory group that will make periodic contributions to the magazine and advise the editorial staff on technical issues. Beginning with this month`s issue, the names and contact information for board members will be published on this page.

Here are our first Editorial Board members:

- Donna Ballast is a communications analyst at The University of Texas in Austin and the standards representative for bicsi (Tampa, FL). She is also a principal in her own consulting business, dbi (Austin, TX). Ballast is the long-time author of our popular question-and-answer column, "Ask Donna." She will, as she has in the past, advise the editorial staff on various technical questions as they arise.

- Dennis Mazaris is the principal of his own consulting firm, PerfectSite (Sterling, VA) and the inventor of PerfectPatch, a patch-cord management device that he is now manufacturing. Mazaris has been the magazine`s informal "tipmaster" over the last two years, and headed the judging panel of the Cabling Installer Tips Contest at each of the last two Cabling Installation Expo shows. Mazaris will continue to review Cabling Installer Tips for us, write occasional articles about cable management and other topics, and advise us on business and contracting matters having to do with cable installation.

- Tony Minichiello is the principal of Maximis Communications Consultants (Concord, NH) and a specialist in outside-plant installations. A life member of bicsi, he is active on a number of bicsi committees and recently authored a state-by-state study of installer licensing laws for that group.

- Larry Hamlin is coordinator of industrial programs at Mideast Ohio Vocational School (Zanesville, OH). Hamlin spearheaded the effort that has made his school the first to offer bicsi`s Installer Training and Registration Program in an academic setting. He will write for the magazine and advise its staff about education and training issues.

Donna Ballast, rcdd

The University of Texas at Austin

PO Drawer 7580

Austin, TX 78713

Tel: (512) 471-0112

Fax: (512) 471-8883

E-mail: [email protected]

Dennis W. Mazaris, rcdd

PerfectSite

100 Glenn Dr., Suite A-11

Sterling, VA 20164

Tel: (703) 450-2020