Modex 2020: Meet your DC Velocity e-Show Daily team

The extraordinary growth and success of Modex over the past decade speaks to the elevation of supply chain and logistics to the top tier of today’s corporate hierarchy. Success (and failure) often hinge on how well you’ve integrated your supply chain operations into your overall business goals.

Modex has emerged as a show that brings together buyers and sellers to share ideas and solutions to ever-changing logistics challenges. This year’s trade show features nearly 1,000 exhibits and an educational conference that includes four keynotes and over 150 show-floor seminars.

Because of this—and because MHI and its members are so crucially important to the industries and markets we serve—we invest more heavily in our Modex coverage than any other media brand. Our award-winning 10-person editorial team is both the largest and most experienced on the show floor by far. The result is the best-written and most-useful coverage of the biggest material handling and logistics event of the year.

It takes a robust and experienced editorial team to provide comprehensive coverage of the year’s most important event, and that is exactly what DC Velocity has brought to Atlanta for the week.

You won’t have to look too hard to see these faces at the show:

Mitch Mac Donald, Group Editorial Director of DC Velocity and CSCMP’s Supply Chain Quarterly, also serves as President & CEO of AGiLE Business Media. Mitch began his career as a newspaper reporter before shifting his focus to national business journalism. Twice named one of the nation’s Top 10 Business Journalists, he writes DC Velocity’s award-winning monthly Outbound column. Passionate about music but with absolutely zero musical aptitude, Mitch says that if stranded on a desert island, he would pass the time listening to his “Island 5” of Frank Zappa, The Beatles, Joe Jackson, Roger Waters, and Jason Isbell.

David Maloney, Editorial Director, oversees all print and electronic content created for DC Velocity, include this week’s Modex e-Show Daily. Before entering the wonderful world of supply chain reporting, Dave was a journalist and television producer/director in Pittsburgh. He continues to use those skills in creating electronic content for the DCV audience, including videos and webcasts. In his spare time (which admittedly is not a lot), he enjoys travel and golf, and is a long-suffering Pirates baseball fan.

Susan Lacefield, Editor at Large, is one of those people whom you really don’t want to sit next to at a dinner party. That’s because the more mundane and pedestrian the supply chain topic, the more she likes to geek out over it. While others may wax enthusiastic about autonomous vehicles, blockchain, and robots, Susan loves to talk and write about wood pallets, corrugated boxes, and bar codes. Seriously. Her son once asked her, “Mom, what’s your favorite kind of pallet?” and she actually had an answer for him. That’s because she believes that even in this increasingly technology-driven world, there are untold stories and lessons in the most basic of logistics principles and tools.

Ben Ames, Senior News Editor, thinks the best thing about covering supply chain tech is traveling to cool places (like Atlanta), meeting new folks in logistics, and learning how their robots and startups are about to change the world. Find him typing tweets and news stories on his laptop in airports, hotels, and warehouses. Or catch him after work paddling kayaks, hiking trails, or losing to his kids at tennis.

Diane Rand is an Associate Editor for DC Velocity. Although her career dreams of becoming a Formula 1 racecar driver never came to fruition, she has turned her attention to the next best thing: writing about supply chain and logistics. Most of her workdays are spent handling new products, managing the magazine’s blogs, and tackling special projects. Off the clock, Diane enjoys spending time with her husband and children, tries to find time to train for half marathons, and reads as much as possible.

Victoria Kickham, Senior Editor, started her career as a newspaper reporter in the Boston area before moving into B2B journalism. She has covered manufacturing, distribution, and supply chain issues for a variety of publications in the industrial and electronics sectors, and now writes about everything from forklift batteries to omnichannel business trends for DC Velocity.

Sara Pearson Specter, Contributing Editor, has been writing for supply chain publications since 2001. She owns her own marketing communications firm, Sara Specter, Marketing Mercenary LLC. Clients span a diverse range of fields, including material handling equipment, software, automation, systems design and integration, and packaging. She lives in Oregon’s Willamette Valley, where she and her husband own Bells Up Winery and Vineyard.

Sean Maloney, Associate Editor – Video, puts his broadcast degree to work in helping with DC Velocity’s video production during Modex. Sean will be the one underneath the Steadicam unit roaming the show floor with his dad, Dave Maloney, as they produce video segments featuring many of the leading Modex exhibitors.

Karen Bachrach, Executive Editor, handles editing and daily editorial operations for the magazine. Her role on the DCV team can pretty much be summed up by her Twitter handle: @PeskyEditor. You won’t see Karen on the show floor as she will be back at AGiLE Business Media World HQ gathering, editing, and “polishing” the volumes of content that will be flowing to her inbox from the DCV editorial team in Atlanta.

Martha Spizziri, Managing Editor-Digital, has been a writer and editor for longer than she cares to remember. Suffice it to say that her work in the supply chain field includes 11 years at Logistics Management and five years as web editor at Modern Materials Handling magazine, starting with the website's launch in 1996. Like Karen, she’ll be back at World HQ developing, compiling, and transmitting our Modex e-Show Daily. In her off hours, she can be found reading either a classic work of literature or something really trashy. She also enjoys watching both classic and cheesy old films on TCM.