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This week, two possibly world-changing launches took place: On Tuesday Seth Godin introduced his latest book Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? The next day Apple introduced the iPad.

Most observers instantly declared both fabulous, though a few found fault with some iPad details. You’d have to be on an extended trip to another planet to miss the news of Apple’s iPad, the long-anticipated tablet computer that may do to book, magazine and newspaper publishing what iTunes did to the music business.

The buzz on Seth’s new book is nearly as intense in the blogging/marketing world he inhabits, but the news may have missed some in the industrial world.

Seth Godin is a prolific writer with ten books and one of the longest-running, most-read and most influential blogs of all time. Many are already declaring his book Linchpin the most important book Godin has written, that it will be life changing for those who read it and world changing for the works that ensue.

This post is not a book review, or a review of Apple’s latest cool technology. It’s an alert. It’s a sign of new possibilities in the midst of all our angst over economies and policies and things that may blow up with little or no warning and we’re standing too close.

This week Steve Jobs and Apple demonstrated once again that we can still invent cool tools that are fun to use, and in the process transform whole industries. And this week Seth Godin introduced us to a Manifesto of Fabulous: a guide, a map and an energizer for how each one of us, individually and collectively can make our own fabulous things.

You can find a hint of what was to come in his new book in this brief post from his blog dated November 8, 2009. It’s titled simply "Fabulous"

This is so cool: because we only look at things we want to look at, only talk about things worth talking about, the amount of fabulous in the world continues to rise exponentially.

Even though we're at the tail end of the great recession, think about all the cool stuff in your life. Not just stuff you can buy, but experiences, works of art, innovations of all kinds... the bar has been raised for what you need to do to be noticed, and the market is responding.

Not only do I notice more fabulous, but it sure seems as though the creators of it are more engaged, dedicated and yes, joyful, than I can remember. If there was ever a moment to follow your passion and do work that matters, this is it. You can't say, "but I need to make a fortune instead," because that's not happening right now. So you might as well join the people who can say, "I love doing this."

Fabulous Industrial Machines
There’s a lot of talk of our transformation from an Industrial Age to a Digital Age. In this post-industrial era, some suppose there’s little change or innovation to be found when it comes to engineering industrial equipment. Yet for those who bother to look there’s a wealth of innovation—of fabulous people designing and building fabulous equipment:

• I’ve seen fabulous digital weighing technologies designed specifically for process control. These Smart Force Transducers are developed and manufactured in Niederlenz, Switzerland, and they are just one example of how digital instruments are applied in industrial equipment.
• In an article on how innovation turbo-charges industrial companies I profiled Jim Foley in Pitman, NJ, who headed the team that developed a new material flow aid for gravimetric feeders.
• Ted Gentile, International Sales Manager at Jeffrey Rader Corporation, wrote how innovative biomass feed systems are gaining global acceptance in helping industries tap into this alternative fuel source.
• Mike Hamby, Vice President Sales & Service – NAFTA, at Gundlach Equipment Corporation wrote how a fanatical adherence to maintenance-friendly design principles takes much of the labor, cost and pain out of maintaining their roll crushers and cage mills in the field.

In every one of these examples you’ll find people who reached beyond the common to achieve results that set a new standard in industrial equipment. And in every example, there are users around the globe, who when they encounter one of these machines in the field, are saying, "fabulous." Those who buy and read Linchpin may find themselves among those riding at the top of the growing wave of fabulous that Godin sees coming.

Don Dunnington
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Posted by: Will at February 3, 2010 12:25 PM

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