Download DR15 - Prof Steven Abbott

***Preface
**[NOTE: this following introduction and following table of contents were written for
the Web Words book and this document, they did not appear in Converting Magazine.]
I love to write. My first ‘short story’ was written while I was in the second grade. This
first work of fiction was lost. (Discarded would be more accurate). My first ‘books’
were on wound roll stresses and winder vibration, and were written when I was manager
of R&D at Beloit. These non-fiction works were reincarnated in part in my Mechanics
trilogy published by TAPPI PRESS in the latter half of the 1990’s. I doubt, however, that
I am a natural at writing. Rather, it required both passion and practice to enable the effort
to bear some fruit. And practice I did. I have begun a second trilogy of books on
industrial problem solving, the first of which should be available early 2001. I have now
published well over 100 columns, papers, and articles. I have also written nearly 1,000
internal memos and reports.
Of all my work, however, the most popular are the Web Works columns published by
Converting Magazine. In some sense this began as a monthly internal technical
newsletter entitled Web Watch, and was written when I was as a senior research scientist
at Kimberly-Clark. With this newsletter, I learned how to communicate technical
information in a short, direct, informal and often entertaining style. I am still learning.
In the fall of 1992, I gave up conventional employment to become a consultant. I thought
this would be easy. There were five winder consultants in the paper industry, and all
were nearing retirement. I would simply pick up their work. I would also be made easy
because I was better known, through publications, and better educated than the other
consultants. Wrong.
My timing couldn’t have been worse. The paper industry entered a serious slump from
which it still has not emerged even today. Paper companies were ‘right sizing’ their
people by the thousands. My potential clients were in no mood for hiring an outsider
when they were firing their own. My target customers were hunkered down in a survival
mode. In my first year of consulting I did feed my family and put a roof over their heads,
but little else. I needed to reinvent myself for a changing market and economy.
The breakthrough came in the fall of 1993 when I approached Yolanda Simonsis of
Converting Magazine to write a column. I showed her samples of my work. She had the
sense of opportunity to risk introducing a column on a subject that had never been
covered regularly before, namely web handling. I began writing the monthly Web Works
column in January of 1994 and continue to this day. This column was a marriage made
in heaven. It was to become the most popularly read page in the magazine. I was
introduced to a much wider market of potential customers. I survived and even thrived as
a consultant.
These columns as well as other longer technical reports are included in entirety here
much as they were published in Converting Magazine. The differences are minor