First of all, let me just say this:

*whew.*

That palpable sigh of relief is because, as anyone who has possibly stumbled across this site from my other blog might know, I’ve been looking for a new job since earlier this year when it became clear that my old position had been put in jeopardy by the state of the U.S. economy. With my saint-like wife and three ever-growing little boys looking on like orphans in a Dickens novel, I knew that securing a new job quickly and decidedly was not just a high priority, but a literal necessity – and I usually don’t like to use the word “literally” literally.

So I’m very proud to reintroduce myself to you as the new Director of Marketing at Alps Controls and their rather impressive e-commerce website alpscontrols.com. Based in Homestead, Pennsylvania (roughly 15 minutes east of downtown Pittsburgh), Alps Controls sells thousands of HVAC and building controls products to commercial contractors around the world. We have over 100 manufacturers of a wide variety of sensors, temperature control equipment, security access controls, leak detection systems, and a whole host of high-tech wizardry that I need to learn a lot more about.

I’ll be handling all of the marketing content on the Alps Controls website, including the creation and management of online video, sales and promotional content, advertising, posting to the company’s blog site (which, in short order, will be migrated to WordPress because I’m a WordPress snob) and development of other social media tools to increase interaction and communication with our audience.

It’s a terrific new opportunity for me, and after joining Alps a week ago, I know I’ve made a great choice. The company’s management has created an extremely employee-centric community with the entire team dedicated to success, cooperation, service and meeting our customers’ needs. I’m extremely excited to get working with all of them, and to discover new online tactics to help get the word out about our products, manufacturers, and terrific value of our e-commerce site.

Personally, I’d like to send out a warm thanks to everyone in my circle of family, friends and others who provided help, tips, leads, recommendations and all manner of assistance while I was searching for a job. It was a stressful handful of months that I wouldn’t much want to revisit, but – like tough times tend to do – I feel like I was able to learn not just a lot about myself, but about the people in my life who I love and value. Again, thanks.

Coming up next time: some plans for this blog, thoughts about my other one, and other future musings. Come back soon and we’ll figure it out together.

On Induction weekend this year – July 27-30 – it was an ideal time to be in Upstate New York at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown where they celebrated their annual Hall of Fame Induction ceremony and weekend-long festivities. This year Tony Gwynn and Cal Ripken Jr. are the inductees. And while you’re in the baseball state of mind, take a look at the Hall of Fame catalogs I’ve got in my portfolio.

Writing at the Marketing Profs Daily Fix blog, Gerry McGovern observes a trend that websites are putting a higher priority on their visual design than their usability. It’s true that Web users demand high levels of easy-to-navigate and usable content, but I’m not sure I’d agree that the most usable sites are necessarily ugly by definition. I’d suggest that successful sites emerge from a kind of online natural selection – if the combination of looks and usability are there, people will return and continue to find value in the site.

There’s no argument that online content is an information medium, but we mustn’t count out its power as a visual medium as well.