Talk about nice publicity.
G&T Conveyor, the Tavares outfit that makes baggage-handling systems for airports, hits the small screen tomorrow, featured at 9 p.m. on John Ratzenberger’s Made in America on the Travel Channel.
This is the show where Ratzenberger, best known as barfly Cliff on Cheers, profiles U.S. manufacturers. In the past two seasons, he’s hit all sorts of companies — from Welch’s, the grape juice maker, to Binney & Smith, the maker of Crayola crayons — but G&T is the first from Florida.
It’s nice to see the shrinking manufacturing industry get some good buzz.
The G&T segment includes interviews with co-owner John Majewski and CEO Mike Malkowski.
G&T employs 800 people nationally and 300 in Lake County. The company was begun in 1987 by Ted Majewski, brother to John and the “T” in the name. Its customers include Orlando International — if you travel JetBlue, you likely pluck your luggage from a G&T belt.
Some skinny on Ratzenberger: He doesn’t like being called Cliff and he’s got a wacky sense of humor. When filming at G&T last October, he noted that engineers work in private cubicles — and suggested they could work naked and nobody would know.
I’m fairly certain the crew hasn’t given that one a go yet.
STUDY TIME. Community leaders generally agree that Orlando needs more video-game makers, Web designers and other businesses in high-paying entertainment- and digital-technology fields.
Maybe we’ll find out how to get them this spring.
That’s when a report comes out — $75,000 worth of research, in fact — that will look at what the region should do to draw the must-have businesses.
Lou Musante, a principal at Catalytix, is doing the research for the Metro Orlando Economic Development Commission. Catalytix is a Pittsburgh company tied to Richard Florida, a well-known author and professor who for years has pushed the idea that a “creative class” of knowledge workers — people who think for a living — is vital to a strong business community.
I caught up with Musante to get his early take on what’s working and not working in Orlando as we attempt to develop our own creative class.
The good stuff: UCF’s Florida Interactive Entertainment Academy, which opened downtown last year and teaches digital arts. He also liked the crossover between business and academia, as in Ben Noel, a former top guy at Electronic Arts, who left to run the entertainment academy. And Musante liked the area’s diversity.
The challenges? (Nothing’s ever “bad” when you’re a consultant sitting at the same table with the people who pay you.) Musante would like to see more university-business ties. He also said there wasn’t enough “street” culture — Fringe Festival kind of stuff that appeals to many young people more than the symphony, opera and ballet.
A final note: Musante mentioned a couple of times developing an arts incubator, similar to the technology incubator at UCF. I have an inkling that idea will find its way into his report.
Original Post by Susan Strother Clarke, Sentinel Columnist