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 August 10.
And as we’ve made these plans, in the back of my head I’d have 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.
“I’m more proactive than I thought,” Weldon, 66, quips when I tell him he was the first one in the door.
Weldon has spent most of his life involved in the auto industry, starting as a young boy sweeping the showroom floors at his father’s car business. His father would add after-market 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 eight rooftops across nine brands plus a collision center.
He says he watched last year’s forum sessions — it will be virtual again this year — and took away a lot of good information. You can see the roster of speakers below.
“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 “non-biased 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 here.
“I’m looking forward to it,” Weldon says of this year’s forum. “I love the content; it’s very relevant to today.”