Dunes Blog

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My employer, Livemercial, had infomercial legend Billy Mays come to town a few weeks ago to make this hilarious ‘Office’ Parody for the ERA Convention in Las Vegas.

The video is great and Jim Barnthouse and the team did a great job putting it together. It was a big hit at the convention.

The visit from Billy Mays was great. He spent the day in the office and signed autographs. Then he made an appearance at the first Livemercial Digital Cocktail Hour. It was fantastic.

Check out the Livemercial Billy Mays ‘The Office’ Parody video below:

I read in the paper this morning that the City of Valparaiso is going to fast track reconfiguring the intersection at Indiana 2 and the Easport Industrial Park.

Thank God.

As someone who uses this entrance four times a day, this can’t come soon enough. There is a lot of traffic through there and it’s simply not large enough to deal with trucks that insist on using it.

The plans are to turn the entrance into a more gentler s-curve so trucks don’t have to make 2 90 degree turns right after each other. I have been stopped on numerous occasions and had to wait for trucks to navigate through the intersection, blocking it.

One thing I love about the City of Valparaiso is that they are pretty good about quickly solving problems and trying innovative solutions (i.e. the roundabout). It’s a credit to Mayor Jon Costas. We’re kind of lucky he lost his bid to Indiana Attorney General.

Another one bites the dust.

A couple of weeks the Union Tank Car company was in the news, they’re closing the plant in East Chicago and shifting production elsewhere. While this is a sad event for the employees, this is not a new type of event. It is indicative of the general decline of industry in Northwest Indiana over the past couple of decades.

Growing up here, I saw the steel industry collapse and come back to life several times. And this was in only the span of the last 15 years.

There will come a day when nothing is made here anymore.

I’m confident we are preparing for it well. Most people may not notice it, but NWI has many good institutions of higher learning. These relatively cheap school are churning out a well educated, young populace. And they’re finding that there are actually jobs for them in the area using their skills.

I think South Shore expansion will help negative affects of the decline of industry in The Region. Not only will it open NWI up to bring in employees from elsewhere, it will essentially make The Region more of a suburb to Chicago, and highly educated locals will be able to get quickly to jobs in Chicago, jobs that may not be readily available yet here.

What is happening in NWI is a microcosm of what is happening countrywide. No longer are we going to make things, simply consume them. Ideas and knowledge will be our biggest industry followed by a service industry to service the people in the knowledge economy. Northwest Indiana has a long a proud history of industrial power but I think it’s transitioning well into a new type of economy.

There will be people that suffer due to this shift. It will be very hard for some people to find new jobs and learn new skills after working in the same job for many years. That’s the nature of the capitalistic society we choose to live in. It’s called ‘creative destruction.’ You have to destroy to create. While the mills are destroying themselves, new industry will rise in it’s place. One day that too will collapse and be replaced by something else. On and on it goes.

One thing that young people are quickly learning as they enter the job force is that nothing is guaranteed. Your job is temporary, be it one year or five years. The best way to deal with this is to always be learning and always be looking for better opportunities. Never get complacent and expect a company to take care of you for the rest of your life. It’s just not like that anymore.

One thing is for sure, people will always be living in Northwest Indiana. And there will always be something for them to do. The trick is to make sure you’re doing what you WANT to do.