Bern Gannon: I’ll start halfway through my high-tech career path. My degrees are in automated equipment I robotics which includes a year's advanced course work in computer integrated manufacturing.

My actual experience in both of these disciplines has been in the implementation of industrial and higher education CAD/CAM labs, CNC mills/lathes, and various automated equipment robotics components. I also spent three years in geographic information systems.

I was teaching and consulting at an applied technology center at the local community college and was asked to give a tour to Quarry Tile Co., which was interested in purchasing a waterjet for tile geometric-shape production. We discussed this creative I technology, and I went to work for them. After we solved the geometric production issues, I went on to development of methodologies for producing complex mural and signage in ceramic tile.

My background, before going back to college to get my degree, was almost solely as a craftsman. I owned a cabinet shop and did a lot of architectural surface applications-both exotic and practical-in Palm Springs, CA.

I'm pretty sure that we were one of the first waterjet-based companies to specialize in ceramic tile, which wasn't very common three years ago.

Roundtable Conference: Waterjet Technology - Continued

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I got into waterjet by designing some products that waterjet just happened to be a good way to produce, and that's how I ended up getting involved in creative edge corporation along with my partner Jim Belilove about nine years ago. From there, I started producing products and custom artwork with the waterjet when it wasn't working very well in those days. It's certainly come a long way since then.

Tom Ferguson: My partner, Michael Pillar, and I started a stained-glass studio about 20 years ago and he continues on the glass side to this day. I went back to school and started doing product marketing. He and I got back together about two years ago on a piece that he had done with a waterjet.

He'd been working in glass with a waterjet for a project with Andersen Window Corporation, and one day a light bulb went off in his head during an installation and he realized he could cut stone with the waterjet, too.

Out of that one-of-a-kind commission-somewhat along the lines of Harri's background of fine arts-we decided there probably was an opening here in the marketplace for a design and marketing perspective. Pietra Bella has been going now for about a year-and-a-half.