Category: President’s Blog

Board Zoom Link There is a new Board meeting Zoom link to use for all board meetings: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/86703686612?pwd=UM3tuQe3HBtBNycGvI1icThZsfVvl7.1 The board meets every 3rd Thursday of the month for 90 minutes @ 8PM Eastern. Each meeting is posted to the event’s calendar on the home page in case you forget when or lose the link. Every member is welcome to attend and observe. The meeting agenda is published a week in advance and can be found on the Board Meeting Records webpage. Meeting minutes, the Zoom call recording, and the transcription of the call will be posted within a week of the call to the same page. Directors and officers reports as well as committee reports used to be available only to board members in the “board packet” These reports are now available to all members and can be found on the Board Reports webpage. I think an organization is much healthier when all members have direct access to all the information. If you’ve never attended a BOD meeting know that the meeting starts and ends on time and sticks to the agenda. Meetings are 90 minutes long and always open to all members. Executive committee meetings which used to be how the society conducted it’s business are now  reserved for emergency events relating to Personnel or legal issues which are so delicate they should not be shared. If such an unusual situation were to occur the meeting would be noted as having taken place but it’s content not divulged until it was deemed appropriate to do so.    2026 Symposium follow-up. The first virtual symposium is now in the record books. We had 4 days of events including 17 presentations ranging from how to make a tungsten to boro seal without uranium transition glass, to a variation on a toffolo style goblet done in boro on the lathe. There was socializing time at the end of each call with an “open mic” style Glass Happy Hour. Even though it was the first time we tried a virtual format we had nearly as many registrants as last year’s in person symposium. Those registered for the symposium can watch the call recordings which include Q&A with each presenter for the next month as not everyone was able to make it to every call. This way no-one misses out on any content. The follow up survey results were striking in how positive they were. Many suggested we hold a virtual event every year even if we have an in-person that year. Time will tell what we can manage with limited volunteer time and limited funds. The virtual and the in-person symposia target two different demographics. Some of us don’t have the funds to take time off of work and pay for travel expenses, or we’ve got kids at home and can’t leave for 4 days. Others love to meet their friends in person for a relaxing week away and maybe learn something new in-person. It would be ideal to serve the needs of both Read More …

Virtual Symposium Hello from the virtual symposium. We’re half way through with day three happening in a few hours. So far it’s been great. We’ve heard/seen 9 presenters and spent time in 5 breakout rooms discussing specific topics. Those who didn’t want topic discussion stayed on the main call where we hung out in Glass Happy Hour, a time for social connections, introductions, and casual conversation. This is the lobby and the bar of the virtual symposium. Hop in to see who’s here. THIS JUST IN: We’ve just figured out how to add real time close-captioned language translation. Beginning tonight you can read the English audio in Polish, Italian, Japanese, German and 30 other languages. My apologies to the Norwegians: you’ll have to use Swedish or Danish for the time being.    Tifa Hunt and Don Gossard are working hard to heep the technology functioning. Between YouTube, Canva, Zoom and sidebar texting on cell phones your tech team is staying busy bringing you an “enjoy it from the couch” experience. Tonight will be the premier night with four technical videos plus two tours, one of the Millipore Milwaukee glass shop and the other of the Ilmenau Glass School in central Germany about 150 miles from Frankfurt. For symposium registrants: each day’s full recording including Q&A with the presenters, is uploaded at the end of the night and available for viewing the next morning. If you had to leave the call early or missed it entirely you can rewatch it at your leisure for up to 30 days.  BOD Meeting & Annual Meeting Sat is the last day of the symposium. We will have a modified schedule beginning with a shortened BOD meeting (all are welcome) followed immediately by the Annual meeting for members. To join either one check your email/text or the Home Office news and announcements for the special Zoom link you’ll need to participate. Following the meetings we’ll switch back to the regular symposium link for the awards ceremony, Art Auction results, and 3 videos of special guest artists: Chris Hurley builds an enclosed goblet, Ryan Fitt constructs a toffolo style goblet, and Tim Dryer assembles a Carbonation Wrangler. Thank you to the three artists for sharing their time and talents. Chris and TIm have donated their goblets to the Art Auction. If you are the winning bidder you could go home with one or both! Ryan’s goblet didn’t make it to completion but the vid is still a joy to watch.  Video Library During the Annual meeting the new Video library will get it’s formal reveal. The ASGS now hosts it’s own videos for it’s members. There aren’t a lot of videos yet but JIll Korgimagi is working hard to re-edit and upload decades of symposium videos. I’m assembling an editorial review committee to screen what is posted for professionalism, and technical accuracy. They will also help with accurate descriptions and search terms. What you find in our library will be findable, trustable and accurate. Please be Read More …

President’s Report I’ve tried my best to summarize all that’s happened in the last year. It’s been a very busy year, with countless things addressed, repaired, or started. Please take a minute to read my President’s report on the BOD Reports page. There is a quick 250 word summary at the beginning followed by 4+ pages of details. I think it is vitally important that the membership understand what the BOD (and the President) are taking on. I can only make the information available, it is your responsibility to look it over. You will also find reports from most of the Sections and Committees there.   Annual meeting I’ve worked hard to reshape how we do the annual meeting. Beginning this year what used to be called the “board packet” is no more. This was a 60-80 page document filled with section and committee reports. It was painful to write, and even more painful to read, plus it was not easily available to the general membership. Starting this year those reports are already published to the website for Directors and more importantly every member to be able to read. There will not be time during the annual meeting to cover most of this information. You really have to read it on your own outside of the meeting.  I’m working to get all presenters during the annual lined up and organized. Everyone will have an enforced time limit to speak. We will conduct the meeting according to Robert’s Rules of Order as required by our Bylaws and be finished in 90 minutes. Unlimited microphone time and extra conversations will happen at a Town Hall Zoom call a few days later on June 28th 3PM Eastern. Virtual Symposium We’re only days away with a still lot to do. Both Jill Korgimagi and I continue to edit videos to be shown. Tifa Hunt, Don from the home office and I did a dry run of Zoom, YouTube, and Canva with Don working out the technical kinks of the symposium call. We’ve got 17 videos to run with all sorts of interesting content.  There will be Q&A sessions after every video along with breakout rooms for specific topic discussions. At the end of each day we’ll transition into social time with Glass Happy Hour. Fingers crossed it’s a good experience for everyone. 

Symposium Registration Registrations continue to trickle in. I want to encourage all of you to get signed up. Rates go up 20% June 1st. Video presentations continue to come in. I just got a commitment from Ryan Fitt to build a Toffolo style goblet as interpreted by Ryan. I’m very curious to see what that might be. I’m deep into editing the Allan Brown double coil distillation head recorded by Kyle Meyer. Right after that comes the convert a soft glass electrode to boro by Aaron Kirchhoff. There are several more after that. It’s going to be a good symposium. Consider attending. Register here. Art Auction New items are coming in and we could use a lot more. It’s now viewable with a countdown clock to when it opens. Take a look at the offerings here. If you’d like to contribute something to the auction look at the bottom of this page for links to upload your item. 2027 Budget At the most recent Board meeting the board approved a budget for 2027! For the past few years there wasn’t a budget of any kind. Historically we’ve been $15- $20k in the year after year. Because of the hard work Kevin Moeller, Don Gossard, and I did, it is not quite a balanced budget but comes within striking distance of being one. This is an accounting document and not easy to interpret, but in pursuing my interest of transparent governance, it is available for Members to see on the reports page. We’re not out of the financial woods yet but have made great progress. I’m proud of the board and of what we’ve accomplished, and there’s more to be done, and it’s OK to celebrate a move in the correct direction. Fusion Back issues The last of the missing back issues have been found and loaded to Dropbox. Don is working on getting them posted into the Fusion library area. When those 12? are uploaded we will, for the first time, have a complete set of Fusions for all members to make use of as a benefit of membership in the ASGS. They are already available for free as a download. As Don converts the old files into ones Lulu can use they will be available for purchase as printed bound copies mailed to your door. This file conversion will likely take months to complete. In the meantime read them online, download them digitally, or print them out at home on your printer. E. L. WHeeler’s book titled “Scientific Glassblowing” is still the gold standard for technical reference books about methods and techniques for our trade. It’s been in and out of print for years. (There happens to be a pristine copy in the Art Auction this year donated by Bob Ponton.) Because of some digging by Don Gossard we’ve discovered that Salem Community College was gifted the rights to publish this book by Mr. Wheeler around 2012. Since then it’s been reprinted once and is again out of print. Read More …

Art Auction The auction continues to be open and ready for you to send your items. For the first time ever, I’ve had the courage to submit something. I put in a martini glass I made a few years ago that was sitting around collecting dust. I was surprised at how easy it was easy to submit. Here’s a link with instructions Scroll to the bottom to read the simple details. As a teaser here’s a pic of my glass. I bet you can do better than I did. Send something in, I dare you. We need submissions. Symposium planning The schedule is slowly gelling. I now have content from 9 of the 16 presenters. We’ve zoomed past several deadlines for submission. I’m hoping that the next (and final) deadline will do the trick and get folks to send in their recordings. Without them we have no symposium.  Video Library After a monumental effort by Steve Scranton, Don Gossard Jill Korgimagi and myself; the ASGS video library is officially out of development and in beta testing. It seems that the technical kinks have been worked out. Select people are now testing it looking for ways to break it. I hope they fail. At the moment there are less than a dozen videos up for testing. In time there will be several hundred, our video library is extensive, dating back decades.  Soon you will be able to search the entire library by: Year Location of filming (Symposium location)  Author (presenter’s name) Newest/oldest date of recording Keyword search (any word in the title or description) Hashtag search (a long list of words assigned by the editors to describe content. You’ll be able to scroll down the list or manually type a word. This will be an epic upgrade to member benefits. We’ve been waiting for years to provide our members with a way to watch ASGS symposium videos again. It used to be that a CD was sent each year with video of the previous year’s symposium demos. That was stopped quite a while ago as being too expensive. The new online video library will be searchable. These search features took a long time to get right. There will be way too many videos to randomly scroll through the list, looking for what you want. If you can’t find what you want it it’s as good as not being there and we’ve failed you. Steve our Webmaster guru has spent the past 4 months wrestling the various search options into submission. It hasn’t been easy. I’ve lost track of how many times it looked like it was going to work and then didn’t. I’m happy to say, it’s working now and with any luck our beta tester breakers will fail and you’ll get to try it for yourself by the end of the month. Stay tuned. Methods and Materials Handbook Don in the home office spent a bunch of time going through this historic pdf document on the website adding chapter titles and a Read More …

Symposium planning Things are well underway. Presenters are slowly sending their footage in for editing. Jill Korgimagi and I are gradually building out the videos to be shown during the symposium. Kyle Meyer our Social Media guru is crushing it with multiple posts per week to Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn. If you notice an ASGS post online, like it and repost it. This helps a lot to get the word out. The Art Auction is slowly receiving donations AND we could use a lot more items. This might be a great year to donate for the first time. It’s my first time. I’ve donated a one of a kind martini glass I made a few years ago. The Auction is online. It will have a worldwide audience. If you want your work to be seen by a larger audience. This is a great way to do it. Click here and scroll to the bottom of the page to learn about how to donate an item.  The home office and I have just published the revised material for exhibitor and sponsors this year. It’s the least expensive opportunity to be an exhibitor ever. If you know of a company that might be interested point them here for more information. Technical References I created a new page in our library called Technical References. Here is that page. The first document that’s been added is the long missing Methods and Materials Handbook. This massive collection of tech tips, glass shop hints, practices and procedures used to be mailed to each member when they joined.  Some of it is outdated. Some of it might be dangerous to try given what we know today. Some of it is very helpful or hard to find information. It was assembled by the ASGS founding fathers in the 1950’s and 1960’s for use by members….. and It’s back. Maybe you know of a document that would be good to post here for members to use. Please contact me directly with your information Video Library I’ve been working with the home office and the webmaster to create a searchable video library to hold our symposium (and other) videos. Because of some behind the scenes technical details, it’s been a painfully slow process to bring this online. This week we took a big step forward. The search engine seems to be working. You will be able to search by date, location, author, category (hashtag) or any of the text description of the video. The next step is to load a dozen or so videos and retest. If it all still works I’ll flick the switch and we’ll be in business for ourselves and no longer need the quirky unpredictable link to Flow Magazine.   Mail forwarding It’s one of those naggy behind the scenes things that makes life difficult even though it’s mostly invisible: email forwarding. Over the past few years we’ve had a hard time using ASGS based addresses. They forwarded inconsistently. Sometimes the mail never got delivered. Other times it was Read More …

  Membership renewal We’re well underway in the annual renewal of memberships and hoping that all of you will or already have renewed your membership to the ASGS. If you haven’t: Is there something in the way? What’s lacking? Is there something you’re unhappy about? You can reach out to me one-on-one for a private confidential conversation if that feels better. I’d like to know how the ASGS can better serve you. Symposium Update Videos are rolling in and being processed in anticipation of showing them during the symposium. I am really excited about some of what’s in the pipeline: center flange and sidearms on a 100Liter flask, build a 200mm Square box out of boro plate, get a tour of the glass shop in Trondheim Norway, learn how to covert a soft glass neon electrode into a boro electrode, get an introduction to the glass engraving lathe. It’s going to be a good one. Don’t miss out. It will never be as inexpensive as this year. $100 for members $40 for students. All recordings will be available to watch for a month after the symposium in case you miss a day. Artistic to Regular member change Randall Strait was approved for converting from artistic to regular membership. Congrats to Randall who is an incredible resource to the ASGS with his equipment skills, network of resources, and boundless friendliness and energy. Welcome! Bylaws changes In case you don’t already know, the ASGS is governed by a document called “The Bylaws” You can find them here on the website. In order to make changes to how the ASGS is run sometimes the bylaws need changing. This is intentionally a somewhat slow process and involves: the board discusses an idea for change if it’s agreed we pursue by passing a motion an email is sent to the Bylaws and Steering Committee explaining what the board wants done The Bylaws and Steering Committee then meets to discuss the proposed changes and 1) reviews the current bylaws looking for words that need to be added or removed to meet the request of the board. 2) The committee can also include it’s opinion about the proposed change: is the change a good idea or not and why  3) When their work is done they send their results back to the board. The board must now review and vote twice with a time gap between the votes, on the proposed changes before the bylaw change goes into effect.  At last night’s BOD meeting the board voted yes for the first of the two votes need to change the bylaws on these three items: 1) How to elect a replacement President elect if the current one resigns while in office 2) How to cancel an ASGS membership 3) Reduce the time between bylaws votes from 4 months to 2 months. The exact wording of each proposed change can be found on the BOD Meeting records page here. All three proposed changes need to wait at least 4 months Read More …

It’s been a very productive month. For a full list of what’s happening check out my President’s report on the BOD reports page Salem Community College trip Perhaps the most enjoyable thing all month was a trip to SCC which I graduated from in 1979. Back then we blew glass by the light of whale oil lamps and ate nothing but hard boiled eggs so we had enough natural gas to run the torches (just kidding). But really what we call flameworking or torch working today, is also called “lampworking” because if you pull a glass point and blow air through the skinny end into an oil lamp (works with a candle as well) you add enough extra oxygen into the flame to melt glass. This was the original heat source used to manipulate small bits of glass found on the floor of the hot shop into various shapes. The original flameworked paperweights contained glass objects made this way. We’ve come a long way from oil lamps to Herbies and GTTs and Carlisles. Advisory board meeting I went to SCC to represent the ASGS at their advisory board meeting. This group meets annually to give the college input for it’s scientific glass program, what’s working well, and what could use improvement. It’s an opportunity for the ASGS President to meet the big players at SCC and the scientific glass industry. This year there were Presidents, Owners, and production managers from AGI, Astra Glass, ChemGlass, DelVetro Scientific, Millipore, PEG, SP Wilmad, Tosoh, and Richland Glass present. It was very helpful to hear what they were interested in. They also had a number of things to share about the ASGS. As it turns out many of them are interested in the ASGS developing a certification program for glassblowers. Something similar to the software and welding industries where a person can take training in a specialized area of their field, take a test supplied by industry experts and receive a certificate saying they are certified as a Microsoft Office Specialist in Excel or pipeline welding or many other specialties in both fields. In the scientific world there is nothing like this. Companies looking to hire potential employees are interested in understanding the potential employee’s skill set. Having certifications managed by the ASGS would help that. I agreed to begin conversation with several company reps to learn more about the details of what they are looking for. I imagine this to be a 3-5 year project that could dramatically improve our membership numbers, increase symposium participation (that’s where the tests would be administered), and also add a bit to our income stream. Career Fair I set up the ASGS booth at the SCC career fair and spoke with a number of students about why joining ASGS is a good idea. This year I had QR codes ready for those interested so they could open a membership application right there at the booth on their cell phones. Also I worked with Don at the home Read More …

President’s Report It’s been even busier this month than last month. To see all the things I’m working on please check out the President’s Report in a new section of the website called BOD Reports. Going forward this is where all section directors, committee chairs and board officers will be uploading their reports for you to see. Historically writing reports was done twice per year just in time for what was called “The Board Packet” This 40 – 80 page document was distributed to board members only and meant to update the board on what’s happened since the previous board meeting. The reports were often quite long and difficult to write. The President often had a hard time getting Directors to submit them in time for the meeting. Many folks didn’t read the reports even if they did get them. It was a bit of a mess. I’m trying something new with the BOD report page. Each report provider emails a report 250- 500 words long. It gets posted to the website. All members including the BOD has permanent access to them. This first time around I received about half of the expected reports with most of the rest expected by the end of the month. Hop over there, read the President’s report and all the others as well. President’s Report It’s been even busier this month than last month. To see all the things I’m working on please check out the President’s Report in a new section of the website called BOD Reports. BOD Documents Another valuable addition is the BOD documents page. The newest addition is the Book of Motions. This is a chronological list of every board motion made. It took countless hours to assemble this. The creator of the document is Gary Coyne. Most recently it was Nicholas Carpenter a newer member of the Southwest Section who added the last 15 years worth of records. Video library I’ve said it before but this time I think we really are very close to releasing the first batch of symposium videos. Jill Korgimage has worked tirelessly on indexing and editing these files. Soon, very soon.