IIBEC Thunders Onto Opening Ceremony Stage in Logo Reveal; Mythbuster Hyneman Presents Keynote

The hall, packed with a record number of attendees at an RCI opening ceremony, is pitch dark. A hush has fallen. A drum beat commences from backstage. Another. And another. And another. The beat swells. Suddenly a sign, labeled “Thunder,” lights up on stage, and the silhouettes of four drummers can be glimpsed through streaks of “lightning.” The original Roof Consultants Institute logo flashes behind the drummers, and pictures from RCI’s history pulse on a screen to the heart-throbbing beat of “Thunder” by Imagine Dragons, accompanied by the drummers. The RCI logo morphs until the new International Institute of Building Enclosure Consultants (IIBEC) is revealed, held in the hand of a building enclosure expert, who is “Shaping the Future.”

Such was the introduction of the association’s new logo at the Opening Ceremony of the 2019 RCI International Convention and Trade Show. You can watch it here:

Following stirring video renditions of the national anthems of Canada and the United States, President Mike Clark, noting he was the 34th and last president of RCI, officially opened the convention. He explained that when he and his wife Kitty arrived in Orlando, he took a walk before the board meeting and saw a hot air balloon out over the Rosen Shingle Creek golf course. “Apparently, he was lost because he spotted me, lowered the balloon, and shouted, ‘Excuse me—I promised my friend I would meet him an hour ago, but I don’t know where I am.’ So I said, ‘You are in a hot air balloon, approximately 30 feet above ground, between 28 and 29 degrees north latitude and 81 and 82 degrees west longitude.’ He said, ‘You must be a building enclosure consultant.’ I said, ‘How did you know?’ He replied, ‘Everything you have told me is technically correct, but I have no idea what to make of your information, and I’m still lost.’ So I said, ‘You must be a general contractor.’ And he said, ‘How did you know?’ I explained, ‘Well, you don’t know where you are or where you are going. You’ve made a promise you have no idea how to keep, and you are past your project completion time, and you expect people beneath you to solve your problems. The fact is you are in the exact same position you were in before we met, but now it is somehow my fault.'”

“RCI is not lost,” Clark declared. “We know exactly where we’ve been and where we are going. …And as of April 1, 2019, RCI becomes the International Institute of Building Enclosure Consultants or IIBEC. One of the ‘I’s is silent. You get to choose which one.”

Convention Chair and then Second Vice President Scott Hinesley thanked the committee, volunteers, and staff for all their hard work. He then took a photo of the audience and posted it on social media.

Hinesley introduced keynote speaker Jamie Hyneman (a first cousin of IIBEC member Ray Wetherholt). After a video of a score of explosions from the 14½ years Hyneman’s popular Mythbusters program was on the air, Hinesley quipped, “I imagine that’s what it’s like in Jim Koontz’s or Dick Canon’s basement on any random Tuesday.” Hyneman and Hinesley used an interviewer/interviewee framework to introduce Hyneman’s experiences to the audience.

Hyneman noted that in spite of filming 250 episodes and developing all the risk management information the show had to produce for the insurance companies, the most that ever happened to anyone on set or during preparation was a few broken fingers. Ironically, “the most dangerous thing for us was injuries from our safety equipment.”

He discussed different experiments they made during the show, including how methane could build up in a sewer and whether liquid oxygen spilled on a freeway could cause an explosion.

He also showed a video of his latest project at M5 Industries, his workshop in San Francisco—an M548 tracked cargo carrier built to fight forest fires. See an article by Popular Mechanics on the project: https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/environment/a25051641/mythbuster-jamiehyneman-wildfire-tank-sentry/. He has also worked on powered shoes that would allow you to walk at 3 miles per hour and travel across the ground at 7 miles per hour, and he once taught a goldfish to ring a bell.