The Blog has been enjoying the almond-stuffed dates from
Our own Shelley Kerr is just back from presenting a paper at the conference's Baseoils Methodology Seminar and meeting many of her editorial contacts during the two-and-a-half day event. From her photos, I see that the highlights of the trip were the
The trip to
Then things take a turn for the worse. Peter T has surpassed himself in his economising with the hotel where we are staying, across the road from the hotel where the training will be held. I open the door and sidle in to a narrow single room, with a single bed against the wall and a tiny bathroom one metre square. There'll be no swinging of cats here, because with my arms outstretched I can touch all four white-tiled walls at once.
It's a shock to get up in the dark but we get off to a good start to the day, with just the local Dutch delegates delayed as always by the
Over lunch, one of the delegates tells us that only her boss can know that she is out on a training course. She has had to tell her colleagues she is taking a day's holiday, as all external training expenditure has been axed. The other delegates nod in agreement. Nevertheless, Peter tells me that our training delegate numbers are up and that we will probably squeeze an extra course before the end of the year.
"People are finding there's a little bit of money left in their budgets, and they need to spend it," he says.
The other hot topic at lunch is the day's news of the run on Dutch bank DSB.
During Nigel's afternoon paper on "Petrochemicals - a changed world," I help myself to a tea labelled "Sterrenmunt," thinking with my clearly inadequate command of Dutch that this must be spearmint. My mouth fills with the most disgusting liquid, an indescribably horrible concoction which I later read on the label is a herbal brew of liquorice and anis. To be avoided.
Andy Brice from ICB has a few words to say on his newest campaign and blog ...
ICIS Chemical Business is almost a month in to its year-long Education and Recruitment Campaign, and it's already garnered widespread support from many leading trade associations and chemical producers.
It's no secret that the industry is facing a severe labour crisis and there's an urgent need to attract new recruits.
There's a wealth of opportunities for those wishing to pursue a career in chemicals but are students and graduates aware of them? What is your company doing to swell your ranks and how are you reaching out to bright, young talent?
If you fancy sharing news, views or concerns, why not join our online web forum, ICIS connect. http://www.icis.com/icisconnect/groups/recruitment-campaign/default.aspx. There you can take part in discussions, upload videos and documents, and help to address this key issue.
ICIS Chemical Business will be running a series of articles over the coming months - (all ideas and contributions are welcome - email andy.brice@icis.com) and a blog has been launched to highlight the industry's efforts. http://www.icis.com/blogs/recruitment-campaign/
The labour shortage isn't going to go away, so take a moment to share your views. The chemical industry needs YOU!
The ICIS Training team is in
Everyone SO enjoyed the training session on aromatics I did yesterday here in the ICIS London offices, that by popular acclaim I am putting the link to the ICIS aromatics training module here for all to enjoy. Unfortunately, there is not much to see before you pay the $115 (inc VAT) fee.
Click here for the online training site.
Or here for the aromatics module.
The ICIS Petrochemicals & Polymers training seminars went to Frankfurt this week. Nigel, Peter and Linda said the course delegates were a good cross section of buyers and sellers, and very keen. By pure coincidence, two polymer business partners - one producer and his customer - found themselves on the same training course.
My friend Paul Hodges was here in the office on Friday and showed me a shocking slide from a presentation which a well-known chemicals consultancy had given at an industry briefing in June 2008, showing peak oil continuing for years to come and hence high chemical plant operating rates and high profitability. As we all now know, it was as wrong as wrong could be. And if it wasn't so tragic, it would be laughable.
I thought again of this when I came across this joke in Daniel Finkelstein's column in Saturday's Times. It's a statistician joke, but it serves just as well as a forecasting joke ...
Two statisticians are out hunting, taking aim at a deer. The first statistician shoots: it's a good shot, but he misses by 5ft to the left. Cursing his luck he fires again, missing this time by 5ft to the right. Suddenly the second statistician starts jumping up and down, shouting, "We hit it! We hit it!"
Click here for a link to "A Checklist for Survival", an ICIS training webinar with Paul Hodges on Thursday 14 May at 14:00 GMT on: "Who saw this recession coming and how will chemical companies survive it?"
(Photos: the view from my hotel room at the Ibis on the Grasmarkt in Brussels)
It's Springtime in Brussels, and the city's cobbled streets and squares are full of people in pavement cafes enjoying the sunshine, smoking heavily and eating chips with mayonnaise followed by waffles.
But the ICIS Training seminars are not here in the heart of Tourist Brussels. They're a few stops away on the metro at the chic offices of the European Petrochemical Association (EPCA) in the smart suburb of Montgomery.
The group gathered for the seminars on Tuesday and Wednesday this week is a very jovial bunch. All of Peter and Nigel's jokes go down very well, and during the workshop sessions there are gales of laughter as the students take to spending billions of dollars like ducks to water.
A moment to savour is when one Swedish lady on the training course tells Nigel that "it is an honour" to meet him, since she has been reading all of his Chemical Insight articles on ICIS news. Nigel accepts the compliment graciously, although naturally we tease him about it for the rest of the week.
I notice that Peter has jazzed up his presentations with some very stylish photography. This is along the lines of "food porn," lavishly photographed designer food for glossy magazines, and "property porn," those photos of big houses to salivate over in the weekend supplements. Now there's "petrochemical porn" - ordinary household products beautifully lit and arranged with expensive accessories, which Peter has sourced (with attribution) from the websites of Ineos Vinyls, LyondellBasell and BASF amongst others. The photos on my presentations look a bit dusty by comparison.
The Blog's Prize For Making A Heavy Duty Industrial Product Look Green goes to one picture of a chunky black Goodyear tyre nestling in a bed of sweetcorn cobs.
The new boss of Reed Elsevier and hence ICIS has an industry background which includes "the oil, consultancy, healthcare and construction sectors," according to this profile of Ian Smith in today's Financial Times. "Mr Smith started his career at Shell," the article continues, heralding his arrival as chief executive in March.
Reading this on the way to today's ICIS Baseoils training seminar in London, reminds me that it was at exactly this time last year that I read on the train to the 2008 Baseoils conference about Reed Elsevier's intention to sell off Reed Business Information, parent company of ICIS.
