There have been a bunch of folks who have had a major influence on Tom’s Workbench over the past five years. I wanted to take the time to recognize a few of the folks with which the blog would have never happened.

Today, I send a shout-out to Dave Campbell at Wood Magazine.

So, there I was at this rainy work day when I got a strange email on my smartphone. It was a guy named Dave who needed to talk to me. I didn’t recognize the area code, so I had to check it out online… Iowa? What would someone want with me from Iowa?

Turns out it was Dave, and he had an interesting offer for me – Wood was looking to include some additional ‘outside’ perspective to include in the magazine, and he and other members of the editorial staff were charged with identifying, tracking and evaluating a number of blogs.

Dave was calling because he thought I had a good writing style, was consistent with my posts and seemed to relate well with each of my readers. He also dug Iggy, the trained shop monkey.  “Would you like to write a few columns for us?”  Gosh, who could say no to an offer like that?

Since then, Dave has been my primary contact up at Wood magazine. He’s an excellent editor with an eye for how to improve my writing. We will also bounce ideas off each other to make sure that we are tackling topics that appeal to the magazine’s readers.

So far, so good. And, from what I understand, Dave wants Iggy to hang around a little while longer.  Not bad for a wacky monkey.