As did many other Rhode Islanders this past weekend, I had the opportunity to witness an America’s Cup sailing race. Sunday was the final day of the America’s Cup World Series 2012 with a match race between the two Oracle Team USA boats. Local and global visitors lined the shore at Fort Adams State Park and even Larry Ellison was here, cheering on the teams.
These boats are fast, high tech and as Oracle Racing’s CEO Russell Coutts puts it, “meet the expectations of the Facebook generation, not the Flintstone generation.” This quote was taken from an article in Wired Magazine. When did they get interested in high tech sailing?….. when their readers did. Check out these top 10 sailing apps. Times have changed and we see more evidence of it every day. When did Fishman® decide to design the SmartDispenser® to be “app ready” ? ……..when our customers asked us to…
To see some real evidence of changing winds in manufacturing, watch this short video. Or check out this Google result for “apps for manufacturing“. Fluid dispensing has evolved, just like so many other manufacturing processes. Fishman has met the challenges our customers faced and used technology to give end users what they asked for; repeatability, air free, real time data, tracebility and apps…
This has been a year of mostly practice for these world-class sailors and a warm-up for the America’s Cup races to be held in San Francisco next year. The America’s Cup World Series in Newport, R.I. this weekend was on beautiful Narragansett Bay, where visitors to Fort Adams State Park watched the sailors compete in the brand new AC45 wing-sailed catamarans.
It is the first time these particular boats sailed on the East Coast. Newport is the final stop for the inaugural AC World Series. The amazing part of this event was that it was done so that spectators could actually see the race from shore while the host commentators( think John Madden talking fore, aft and jib from the sky as opposed to his bus) broadcast live from helicopters. They excitedly described minute by minute details of lead changes, wind shifts and tacking.
Change can be a good thing, staying staus quo can leave you in the dust, or in boating terms, the wake. For those of you in the US, enjoy your 4th of July and celebrate the vision of our US founding fathers.