At first glance, the gear industry might seem like a small industry, easily navigable for someone new to it. But it’s only small in terms of the number of people involved. In fact, once you’re in it, you quickly realize the gear industry is extremely broad. Not only is the industry global, but it’s also enmeshed with every other industry that involves machinery with moving parts—from automotive to aerospace and everything in between. And the people who work in the gear industry have extremely specialized knowledge.

Our organization (both the publication staff and the AGMA at large) produces a lot of information, between the magazines, newsletters, blogs, social media pages, and so on, and we organize a lot of events—everything from specific gear-related education to management-level webinars and in-person events like the very unique upcoming Motion+Power Technology Expo. We publish standards and information sheets, and we convene the technical minds of the gear industry at conferences like the Fall Technical Meeting.

It's easy for a newcomer to be intimidated and to feel like an outsider at first.

If you are new, you should know that you’re welcome, and that we’re here to help. We’ve prepared a starting point for you—a list of handy links that gives you a broad overview of the information that’s available. We’ve provided links to help you stay informed, stay connected, learn, conduct business and even contribute.

The “Start Here” page at geartechnology.com/start-here is a great place to begin. Sure, you could find all these links if you spent some time digging, but we want to make your life a little easier. We want to help you on your journey from gear industry novice to expert.

And even if you’ve been in the industry for awhile, I guarantee you’ll be surprised by the amount of information that’s available to you and the variety of ways to access it. Sure, we print magazines. But we also produce websites, we blog, we tweet, we create videos, we host webinars, and we collaborate with our audience and our advertisers.

I encourage everyone to visit the “Start Here” page, whether you’re brand new or you’ve spent decades in the industry, because there’s something for everyone there.

I’d also like to stress that it’s about more than information. Of course, we want to make sure you’ve subscribed to our magazines and newsletters. But we also want you to join us on social media so you can participate in the conversation. It’s about getting involved. All those intimidating gear experts are actually a pretty welcoming bunch, generous in their information sharing and interested in helping lift the industry as a whole through collaboration. So we hope you’ll sign up to participate in many of the fantastic networking and learning opportunities our industry has to offer.