The Luckiest People in the World*

Don’t you just love it when you can go onto a company’s website and see the faces and bios of the people who make that company run? People-centered “pages” help give me a sense of the essence of the operation and sometimes might even persuade me to choose one company’s products over another.

If you’ve spent some time trolling the internet, you might have noticed that people-oriented pages are popular among dental laboratory websites. Obviously, it pleases me to see this. Though we have always been a community focused on people, 30 years ago that focus was somewhat different than it is today. We’ve come a long way.

The focus back then was on ceramists. They were a lab’s stars and lab owners were often conflicted about how to showcase them. On one hand, the skill of the ceramist often determined the type of dentist-client—and fee—the lab could procure. On the other hand, the more it bolstered the importance of its...