With just days to go before the world rings in a new year — and new decade — Tom Brennan, master artisan with Fiskars, a division of Waterford, is hard at work to make sure the famed crystal ball in Times Square is ready to dazzle revelers at the stroke of midnight on January 1.
"This is the only moment in time that everybody pauses for just a moment," Brennan told Cheddar on Friday while standing next to the pièce de résistance. "We don't do this other times of the year."
A team of engineers is installing 192 new Waterford crystal triangles on the ball that features this year's unique design, which Waterford is calling "Gift of Goodwill," the latest in its "Greatest Gifts" series.
The new crystals will make up just a fraction of the 2,688 triangles on the ball, which measures 12 feet across and weighs nearly six tons.
The New Year's tradition has been going on in Times Square, the crossroads of the world, since 1904, and the first ball drop happened in 1907.
Brennan stresses that it's not just him, or the team on the ground in New York that pulls off this global feat. "It is a global togetherness," he said. Waterford has craftsmen working on the project in its factories in Ireland, plus the engineers and marketers.
"It's amazing to think that this small city in the southeast of Ireland with just 47,000 people are here on top of the world. We're going to have 1.2 billion people watching us in just a few days' time, so no pressure."
Ben Armstrong, founder of Bitboy Crypto, joins Cheddar News to discuss Bitcoin's downward trend and what's next for crypto after protests in Kazakhstan cause crypto miners to shut down.
Jake Carbone, senior data analyst at InfluenceMap joins Cheddar News to talk about a new report by The Guardian and InfluenceMap that reveals how companies are creating fossil fuel ads designed to look like Google search results.
Desmond Howard, former NFL wide receiver and Modelo college football playoff ambassador, joins Cheddar News to talk about the Modelo sweepstakes honoring the 30th anniversary of his iconic punt return.
The highly transmissible omicron variant of COVID-19 has forced school districts nationwide to return to virtual instruction, but there remain concerns about the quality of education students are receiving online. Andy Bird, CEO of Pearson, an education publisher and assessment service provider, joined Cheddar's "Opening Bell" to talk about steps educators and parents can take to make the remote learning experience an easier one, noting that one of the biggest advantages teachers can have is flexibility. "You cannot take a rigid timetable that works in the analog world and replicate that in the digital world. You need to have flexibility. Asynchronous learning, I think, is a very important part," he told Cheddar.
On this episode of ChedHER: Chief Product Officer at Mathison breaks down how she's building tech to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion in the workplace; Co-Founder and CEO of Carewell.com explains how her platform is easing the pressures that come with caregiving; Founder and CEO of Mentor Agility discusses what goals business owners should set in the new year.
Bianca Padilla, Co-Founder and CEO of Carewell.com, joins ChedHER to discuss how her platform is easing the pressures that come with caregiving, and how she's breaking barriers for women in venture capital.
Elizabeth Spenko, Chief Product Officer at Mathison, joins ChedHER to discuss how she's building tech to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion in the workplace, and an outlook on DEI in 2022.
Julie Elledge, Founder and CEO of Mentor Agility, joins ChedHER to discuss what goals business owners should set in the new year, and what tools are out there for emerging entrepreneurs.
Rob Dongoski, EY Food and Agriculture Leader, joins Cheddar News to discuss what advancements in tech will shape the future of food, and how we are going to see more and more personalization in the food system.
It's no secret tech giant Amazon has a mission of becoming a major player in sports media, and the company is poised to make progress on that goal in 2022. Amazon Prime Video will be the exclusive home to Thursday Night Football for the 2022-23 NFL season. In December, the New York Post reported that Amazon is in the beginning stages of developing studio sports programs, and hopes to soon have a full daily lineup of sports shows. Front Office Sports senior reporter A.J. Perez joined Cheddar News' Closing Bell to discuss.
