Following a successful SEMA Show, it’s time to catch our breath and perhaps take a moment to ponder where we go from here.

As the automotive specialty-equipment industry moves into 2012, SEMA News put out a call to the leaders of the association’s councils and networks to seek their views about what might be in store during the coming year. Their responses are instructive and should provide helpful insights for companies in every segment of the marketplace.

Business technology is in a constant state of evolution, and it can be a maddening chore to try to keep up. It seems that every innovation begets an even newer version only a few weeks later. In some cases, the latest gizmo is only a marginal improvement on what went before, but there are significant trends and tools that simply cannot be ignored.

Some of the fastest-growing markets in recent years have been in the Middle East—the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and the five neighboring countries comprising the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), which are Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and Saudi Arabia.

Google has turned more than a few heads in the business community by rolling out a new, free service that promises to dramatically speed the download of websites.

The man at the mill is John McWhirter, one of the founders of Racing Head Service (RHS). On the other side of the camera is Hot Rod magazine staffer Bud Lang, who photographed McWhirter cc’ing a Chevy cylinder head for a February 1971 profile of the Memphis-based shop.

Each August, members of Congress spend the month in their districts meeting select businesses and organizations to learn more about how policies crafted in Washington directly affect homegrown industries.

New free tools from Google, Bing and Twitter are making it virtually effortless for companies to solicit a positive review from a satisfied customer and then instantly redistribute that review to the customer’s online social circles.

How do you get your share of attention at the SEMA Show when foot traffic is shoulder-to-shoulder thick? Some gimmicks these days have gotten pretty outrageous but—as you can see in this photo from the 1971 Show—SEMA showmanship is a decades-long tradition.

This month, we’re highlighting a few publications written for race fans. While these publications focus primarily on consumer events, they are important to industry professionals because they reach thousands of active and loyal consumers. These publications do a great job informing their readers about our industry’s products as well as relaying important information, such as legislation updates. We encourage the industry to support these publications and add them to your list of required reading.