20-Year Celebration!

With this issue, Connect Business Magazine marks 20 years in business. In the inaugural March 1994 issue, Publisher Jeff Irish said, “If we do our job well, the information contained within the pages of this magazine will strengthen your own local business connections and provide tangible benefits to your organization.” It’s now 2014, Old Man Irish is still here, and we’re still plugging away at our long-standing mission of connecting businesses in nine southern Minnesota counties through features, news, interviews, and advertising.

Much has happened these 20 years. Rather than snippets from the more than 100 people gracing our cover since 1994—similar to what we offered up for our tenth anniversary—this time, we chose to feature in-depth only one special person from each year.

Some of our readers weren’t even born yet in 1994. While putting together our first issue that year, the hot national news items of the time were Tonya Harding’s bodyguard attacking Nancy Kerrigan, Lorena Bobbit being declared temporarily insane for chopping off her husband’s appendage, and 100 FBI agents demolishing a Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas.

Our kinetic world in 2014 seems light years from relatively static 1994. One exception is Connect Business Magazine. We’re still standing in Nicollet, still working feverishly at our mission, and still connecting business decision makers in nine southern Minnesota counties through features, news, interviews, and advertising.

We are your old friend. Enjoy another issue. See you again in 2034.

Sursum ad summum,
Daniel J. Vance, Editor