FOJ Forum sparks interest of those who ‘stay on top' of industry

We've spent the past couple of months planning our fourth annual Fixed Ops Journal Forum, scheduled for the five Tuesdays from July 13 to Aug. 10. We've held strategy meetings, solicited ideas, set the topics for each week and started inviting speakers and panelists.

And as we made these plans, in the back of my head, I had this small worry whether we were putting together a program interesting enough that people would want to attend. Luckily, Mike Weldon quickly eased my concerns.

Weldon, fixed ops director at Hansel Auto Group in the Sonoma Valley region of Northern California, was the first registrant for the FOJ Forum. He submitted his online registration the morning of April 12, the same day an ad promoting the forum appeared in that month's Fixed Ops Journal. Seven minutes later, Rodrigo Sapunar, an aftermarket manager at Bruno Fritsch in Chile, followed suit.

"I'm more proactive than I thought," Weldon, 66, quips when I tell him he was first in the door.

Weldon has spent most of his life involved in the auto industry, starting as a boy sweeping the showroom floors at his father's car business. His father would add aftermarket items such as a radio or air conditioning for new cars sold by local dealerships. For the past 10 years, he's been at Hansel, which has nine brands across eight rooftops plus a collision center.

He says he watched last year's forum sessions — they will be virtual again this year — and took away a lot of good information.

"I'm really interested in the industry," he says. "There are so many changes going on. I want to stay on top of it."

Weldon says he looks for "nonbiased information to chew on a bit and try to understand how it fits in our environment. Because what might be happening on the East Coast might not be happening on the West Coast."

If you want to be like Mike, you can register at: autonews.com/fojforum.

"I'm looking forward to it," Weldon says of this year's forum. "I love the content; it's very relevant to today."