Changing times require changing actions. Change is happening at ACC&CE. We will be a venerable 75 years old next year. We are showing our age and feeling the pressure to find a new lease on life. ACC&CE was founded in New York City at the end of a period of strong economic and commercial growth but immediately had to struggle with very different business conditions. The struggle continues.

Throughout the subsequent depression, war and the years of rebuilding of the modern industrial and business world this member-run and member-financed organization maintained its basic identity as a source of assistance to member consultants and small consulting companies as they served clients in the United States chemical manufacturing and chemical using industries. The structure and style of action continued to be adequate and did not need revision.

Things started to change in industry about 30 years ago. Chemical companies that had been based in New York grew and diversified and many of them moved their headquarters to other parts of the country. Significant growth of chemical industries in Europe and the Far East put pressure on American companies. Companies undertook mergers and acquisitions and shifted old patterns of business. They also diversified their product lines and ways of manufacture in the search for better profit performance.

ACC&CE is in the process of doing the same thing. Profit for us is measured by the number of dues-paying members whose contributions allow us to have a professional Executive Secretary and office and a promotional effort that brings in requests for consultant referrals and, equally important, application for membership from new members. Our volunteer Council has been exploring the changes in our structure and operations that will insure a future that matches the new realities of the business world. A new by-line - Scientific, Engineering, Business & Management Consultants - now appears under the association's name at the top of every issue of this newsletter. This is the first on many such changes. All our communications will now include that by-line. It proclaims a broader field of clients for our member consultants. This change opens up a broader scope of new member inclusiveness.

Take a close look in the member directory on our web page (www.chemconsult.org) at the credentials and competence of ACC&CE members and you will see that we provide consulting service in all the fields encompassed by the founding title plus the new by-line. Applicants for membership will still be subjected to the close scrutiny of their credentials and references to assure the traditional quality and capability of member consultants and the reputation of ACC&CE.

Another change taking place is a new promotion effort directed at prospective members and client prospects. These efforts will emphasize the broad scope of consulting services available through ACC&CE. We are fortunate that a new member, Joseph Porcelli, has been appointed to Council and has taken hold of the new promotion program as chairman of the Public Relations Committee (story below). He will organize many means of promotion: surface mail, email, presentations and published articles by our members, attraction of prospective clients to our meetings, brochures and persistent publicizing of our web address

A welcome change has already started to increase our visibility to prospective members This is a volunteer effort by ACC&CE addressing meetings in scattered locations, where chemists, chemical engineers and other kinds of professionals gather (see story below). The topic may vary, but the message is imparted: who we are and that we want to hear from interested new members and clients.

Yes, the septuagenarian is alive and moving forward in this twenty-first century!

Joseph Porcelli, Chairman of ACC&CE's Public Relations Committee presents this outline of the recently introduced program for public relations.
He is basing it on three goals:

• To have more prospective clients aware of our existence and of the capabilities of our network of qualified consultants.
• To reach more potential members and to convince them to join our group, resulting in a larger number of members. The strength of a larger membership will support further expansion of public relations activities.
• To increase attendance at monthly dinner meetings, raising the visibility of ACC&CE.
  

  Porcelli put forth means by which these goals will be reached. One: Improve the effectiveness of the ACC&CE website--www.chemconsult.org. An extended trial period has shown that internet search engines do not find our site as effectively as expected. Knowledgeable members of Council have examined the structure of the site as originally set up and have proposed critical revisions. These should increase the number of client inquiries, giving us an expanding list of interested client prospects.

  Two: Begin a pro-active effort to get our name, our reputation and our website address in the hands of a large number of prospective users of consultants by a combination of surface mail, email, presentations and published articles by our members, attraction of prospective clients to our meetings. These will publicize our web address and furnish information in other forms: brochures, published articles and a printed or CD-ROM directory. We are assembling a mailing list for meeting announcements to organizations and periodicals as a start. Sending out copies of the latest issue of this newsletter will follow along with press releases and other current events displaying the vitality of our organization.

  ABOUT JOSEPH PORCELLI: Dr. Joseph V. Porcelli is President of JVP International, Inc., the consulting firm he started in early 2001 after retiring as President and CEO of Scientific Design Company. He also held senior executive positions at Halcon and ChemSystems, Inc. He initiated his independent work by consulting for his former employer, then sending letters and emails to his large list of contacts, developed over his career, announcing that he was in business. He says he jumped at the chance to join ACC&CE, attracted by the opportunity to network with a large organization of established consultants, who offered friendship and mentoring, and with an impressive newsletter and website. The Association of Consulting Chemists and Chemical Engineers is very pleased to welcome Joe and will back his public relations initiative with enthusiasm.

Peter R. Lantos (member # 597), who has a consulting practice called The Target Group, has been traveling to American Chemical Society local section meetings as part of the ACS speakers' program. He uses one of several talks that he has already prepared and used elsewhere. With his deep experience in research, marketing and management in the chemical industry and his success as a consultant he is passing on some of the understanding he has gained.

He presented three of his talks, most recently in South Georgia and Florida. These talks have titles like HAVE A HAPPY CAREER, in which he discusses selecting role models, developing personal flexibility, seizing opportunities, and other matters that are needed beyond strong technical expertise.

Another is HOW TO SUCCEED WITH NEW PRODUCTS - BY REALLY TRYING! In this one Lantos uses actual case histories of innovations, including some success stories and several examples illustrating failures. CONSULTING 101 is a talk he uses when appropriate. He explores a number of issues related to being a successful consultant as well as how to operate such a business. He speaks from a list of specific topics covering subjects as: What personal traits does it take and why are they important; How do you start a consulting business; Pitfalls to avoid; Where and how do you find clients; How do you price your services. At all of these meetings, Lantos is introduced as a consultant belonging to the Association of Consulting Chemists and Chemical Engineers. He is prepared to answer questions and distribute brochures about ACC&CE where it is appropriate.

Part of the new Public Relations Initiative is to have more members follow Lantos's lead, either with scheduling help from ACS or other professional groups or on their own. Other ACC&CE members, including Charles Garber (member #533), have delivered talks to ACS sections and found that it not only feels good but gives practice in public speaking and serves to promote their own consulting business.

If you want to have an enjoyable time reviewing the history of chemistry you should read "Uncle Tungsten" by Dr. Oliver Sacks, the neurologist who is famous for his earlier book "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat." Sacks tells of his boyhood in London around the time of WW II, in a family of doctors, scientists and engineers. It seems that all of them supported his scientific curiosity from an early age.

His favorite relative was Uncle Dave (Uncle Tungsten) who ran a light-bulb manufacturing company. He would spend time with Oliver, telling him and showing him facts about tungsten and other metals and their properties and letting him hold specimens in his own hand. Oliver was bright and endlessly curious and his uncle responded to his eagerness to learn about the elements, their compounds and properties.

Sacks was a great reader and visitor to London's museums. Seeing exhibits of geology specimens from all over the world helped him to appreciate that the huge crystals of pure minerals and the microscope views his uncle showed him were related. This opened his eyes to the invisible world of ordered arrangements of atoms. He viewed the giant Periodic Table covering a whole wall showing a sample of each element arranged in their places. Seeing the metals arranged in one section and other kinds of elements in their proper groupings he first began to feel a personal acquaintanship with individual elements.

His supportive and tolerant parents allowed him to build his own small laboratory at the back of the house. He had spending money and took the bus to a supply house where he augmented the equipment and materials from his uncles with his own selections. Soon he was making his own "stinks and bangs", somehow avoiding serious burns and poisonings. Doing this taught him first-hand about the properties of the elements, their compounds and their relations to one another.

For guidance he had the book of instructions of a chemical set for children as well as books lent by uncles and found in the public library. He had old copies of nineteenth century books like the 1860 tenth edition of J. J. Griffin's "Chemical Recreations", originally published in 1830, that gave instructions for many kinds of experiments. Sacks evidently tried them all.

He went on to read about the age when chemistry emerged gradually from alchemy. He read about the early stabs of Isaac Newton, Robert Boyle, Antoine Lavoisier, Joseph Priestly and other pioneers at explaining the experimental observations of mixing various substance under various conditions. He often went about repeating these operations in his own home laboratory. His understanding of modern chemistry grew with him.

This memoir tells a fascinating story of the transition of chemical knowledge from mystical alchemy all the way to the understanding of nuclear energy. It is told by a fascinating man whose family had nurtured interest and self study of a bright boy who grew up to follow his mother and father into medicine as a career.