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| This gypsy predicts a large gathering of friends at Twist and Shout 2005. |
Ever wonder who twisted the first balloon dog or assembled the first spiral arch? We hope to answer those questions and many others in the new Who's Who Guide to the Balloon Industry. This isn't going to be an easy project, but with your help, we know we can pull it off.
This new section of BHQ will be a way of keeping a historical record of our young industry. Rather than write a history book, this guide will allow us to write the history based on the lives of people that have had an impact on our art. The incentive to create a BHQ Who's Who came from the deaths of some prominent industry figures over the last couple of years. We wanted to honor those people and make sure their contributions would be remembered. Not wanting this to be just a collection of obituaries, we have constructed it in a way that will allow us to add artists that are still alive as well. You will be able to search for people, events, and important products and identify the times that they were around.
At the moment only a couple of entries exist. This is where you can help. We've assembled a team of editors that will try to add new entries regularly, based on the suggestions of BHQ members. We have no fixed criteria that a submission must satisfy. Our panel of editors is very diverse, hopefully allowing us to look at each entry in an unbiased way. This is not a competition among artists. No awards are being given as a result of being selected for inclusion in the database. You can suggest someone who's contribution put balloons on national TV or someone virtually unknown that in some small way played a part in the evolution of the industry. It could be someone you know well or someone you'd like to learn more about. We're open to any and all possibilities.
Read the first few entries now. Then let us know who you want to see included. Suggestions for inclusion will not be accepted by email. Please visit the online form to suggest new entries. This will allow all editors to see your suggestions while providing you with a list of questions to help us out.
We used to have a lot of fun picking balloon sculpture photos to feature on the BHQ front page every month. However, the space dedicated to these photos got squeezed out with the navigation and front-page re-design released in December, 2002. After that, our focus shifted to featuring a photo and an artist portfolio in the BHQ Ramblings monthly column. But, we always missed the personality and sense of fun that the Feature Photos gave to the site. This month, inspiration struck. There's a lot of white space on the right-hand side of both email archive pages. Voila! BHQ 2005 Feature Photographs.
We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give. - Winston Churchill |
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