A Happy Accident

Faithful readers of Plastics Technology who have turned to this page likely have two questions right now: who’s this guy and where’s Jim Callari? Second question first: Jim, as he announced in last month’s editorial, is still very much here, expertly covering extrusion, among other topics, and continuing to serve as the editorial director of PT. On the first question, for those who don’t know me, I’ll offer an introduction. My name is Tony Deligio and beginning with this issue, I’ll be the editor in chief of Plastics Technology. Considering that since 1981 only two other people have had that title and that next month’s issue marks the 70^th anniversary of this publication, writing that sentence is incredibly humbling.

To tell the story of how I got here, you’d have to go back to the year 2000 and the former Injection Molding Magazine’s (IMM) conference room in Denver, Colorado. Less than a year after graduating from Colorado State University with a journalism degree and hoping to crack into sports writing, I was interviewing with IMM’s then editor (and — small world — current PT brand manager) Jeff Sloan about an open assistant editor position. I didn’t get the job. I’m not positive but I’ve always believed not catching the misspelling of Albuquerque on a proofreading test cost me the gig — and in the interim, I started working as a freelance sports reporter for a local daily newspaper. Jeff and I stayed in touch, and when an editorial assistant position became available, I took the job, turning down a simultaneous offer to join the newspaper’s sports desk on a full-time basis.

The decision to jump into plastics and trade publications and leave newspaper reporting behind was an early sliding doors moment in my life and career that I’ve never regretted. Thinking back on that conference room and my interview with Jeff, one moment sticks out. Jeff was attempting to simultaneously explain to me the concept of a trade publication and injection molding as a means to make everyday items all around us. As he did so, and I tried to wrap my head around something I had never even remotely considered before that moment, I surveyed our surroundings trying to spot something “injection molded” and interjected, “Like that pen,” about a plastic ball point pen Jeff was holding. “Yeah,” Jeff said before acknowledging that the pen’s body was likely extruded (another new word and concept). Equal parts intrigued and confused, I was hooked and for the last 24 years I haven’t stopped looking at things all around me and trying to figure out how they were made, particularly if they’re made of plastics. 

Like many people I’ve met in the industry over the intervening two decades, my career in plastics was an accident, albeit a happy one. Save the relatively small number of people with plastics engineering degrees, the vast majority of individuals working in this field started doing so accidentally but like me, I suspect, became hooked and stumbled into a career.

As I transition into the next phase of that career, I’m excited to take leadership of PT, especially with Jim’s expert guidance and tutelage. I came to PT in 2013 from a competitive publication telling my interviewers at PT’s parent company, Gardner Business Media, that Jim would likely forget more about plastics than I could hope to learn. From the very moment I joined the PT team, Jim has always been quick with a joke and quicker with help and advice. Plastics in general and extrusion in particular has been incredibly lucky to have Jim covering the technology with a level of expertise and connections that would be the envy of any journalist covering any field. Jim jokes about still having a physical Rolodex of business cards, but those nearly four decades of connections and his knowledge are an invaluable resource to me, PT and our industry.

I look forward to continuing to learn how things are made with plastics and sharing that knowledge with you, our readers.