Back in 2001, before Haestad Methods was acquired by Bentley Systems, John Haestad had the idea of publishing a magazine about water modeling. When John decided to do something like this, it was full speed ahead. Led by Kristen Dietrich and Adam Strafaci, we put out what I think was the best magazine about modeling I’ve even seen, in spite of the fact that I wrote a lot of it. We bought in top people like Walter Grayman, Ben Wilson and Steve Lowry, plus reviewers from around the world for 128 pages of articles, quizzes and marketing.
We covered a wide range of topics from calibration to digital elevation models to genetic algorithms. We had a certification section, where if you completed the test correctly, you would receive Continuing Education Units or Professional Development Hours.
The resources needed to publish such a magazine were huge, and we distributed it for free. Volume 1, Number 1 was the only edition we ever published. But it did get out the word that we were leaders in the field.
One of the more fun things we included was the crossword puzzle below. If you have a few minutes, try your luck with the puzzle. Most of you should get a perfect score. A clue: this was written before WaterGEMS was released so our water distribution model was WaterCAD. (If you want me to give you the solution, either be very nice to me or send me an envelope stuffed with cash.) Enjoy.
If you want to look up past blogs, go to https://blog.bentley.com/category/hydraulics-and-hydrology/. And if you want to contact me (Tom), you can email tom.walski@bentley.com.
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