Virtual Event, Real Benefits: Save your company money, meet peers, win (another) iPad 2 and more

Our marketing blitz has probably made clear that this Thursday, Sept. 8, we will host the plastics industry's first Virtual Event, with the subject "Continuous Improvement in Injection Molding." A few thousand "early adopter" processors already have registered but here's a call to the other 100,000 of you out there. We're baiting our offer with another iPad 2. The first one is already spoken for by one of those first few thousand registrants; this second one goes to everyone who registers from today, Sept. 6, until 10:00 ET on Thursday, Sept. 8.    

But the iPads are just the icing on the cake. Last week PlasticsToday and the companies that are joining us for the event made a test run of the Event to make sure the booths worked and looked good, check the lay of the land and get a feel for how the Event will function. It's user-friendly, looks sharp and is fun too. Moving about is easy, asking questions and meeting others at the Event is easy, and (more bait) many exhibitors are offering prizes to the processors that visit their stands.

Those exhibitors are companies you already are interested in, the cream of the injection molding supplier crop. Signature Sponsors are Engel, Milacron, TMC and Wittmann Battenfeld. In addition to these four, 10 other companies are supporting the Event with their sponsorships and stands. These are Asaclean, INCOE, Matsui, Paratherm, PCS, POCO Graphite, Progressive Components, Sepro, Sigma and Yushin. All of these companies have stands within the exhibition area and will have multiple employees on hand during the Event to answer your questions.

The exhibition is one aspect of the Virtual Event; an excellent lineup of presentations is the other. The format of these presentations is familiar to any of the 1000s of readers who have attended one of our webinars: you listen to the presenter using your computer's speakers, while viewing his PPT slides, and each presentation is followed by a Q&A.

For these presentations, we've invited experts to speak on energy efficiency and savings, mold making, cleanrooms and cleanroom molding, and finding low-cost (high-quality) mold makers. The mold making session includes two from mold makers, but they both did a great job of keeping non-commercial, and all of the other speakers are independent of any supplier.

Our keynote speaker is Dr. Neal Elliott, Associate Director for Research at the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE) and an internationally recognized expert and author on energy efficiency and electric motor systems. He kicks off the event at10:15 ET with a presentation offering an excellent outlook for where energy costs are headed in the United States in the next months and years. Following him is Dr. Mike Muller, Director of the Center for Advanced Energy Systems. His presentation in essence is a walk through a plastics processing facility, pointing out tips and tricks his research team has made during energy audits that helped multiple injection molding facilities make dramatic cuts in their energy usage.

There is much more, and the presentations truly are excellent. The full agenda plus registration for Continuous Improvement in Injection Molding is available here. We look forward to welcoming you to Continuous Improvement in Injection Molding this Thursday, Sept. 8.