Building Industry Knowledge: Preview of the ASC Fall Convention and Expo
On October 21-23, the Adhesive and Sealant Council will hold its biannual convention in Minneapolis.
Chat with the Chairman
ASI Editor Susan Sutton recently spoke with ASC Chairman Rusty Thompson, who shared some highlights of the upcoming convention.
This convention will mark a change in format for the ASC. Can you tell us what’s changing, and why the ASC decided to go this route?
Basically, it’s the weekend travel. We’re shifting all of the sessions by one day, starting the convention on Monday evening and going through Wednesday evening. The biggest change from a format perspective is not having to travel on those weekends to get to the convention. We made this change based upon significant member input and clear guidance from the evaluations.
What types of topics will be covered in the technical sessions?
We will have more of an end user speaker format during the technical sessions, with experts from electronics and building and construction coming in to discuss market opportunities for the industry. We will also have a strong focus on hot melts, as both the short course that will be co-located with the meeting and the convention will have tracks dedicated to this effort. We have also already filled our Advanced Technology track sessions, which will feature seven speakers focused on emerging research.
The ASC always offers plenty of opportunities to network and learn about new products. Can you outline some of the highlights?
The biggest change for networking this year is something we’re calling Speed Networking Lunch. We’re going to do a special lunch that will connect attendees outside of the expo and give participants a chance to meet up to six attendees during a one-hour lunch. The evaluations indicated that our members wanted to continue to expand the expo effort, but also wanted some simple face time with other attendees in order to develop their business network. We think the lunch will help facilitate this, and it’s similar to how we developed the CEO network lunch that we began about two years ago.
The spring event in Atlanta enjoyed record attendance. How are things shaping up for the fall?
Couldn’t be more happy. We’re 80% sold out for the expo, sponsorships are close to selling out and the attendance is ramping up. We expect, once again, to have more than 550 attendees as companies look to focus on R&D and need guidance on trends, or they are looking ahead for the issues or challenges we’ll be facing and want to prepare in advance.
Listen to additional highlights shared by ASC Chairman Rusty Thompson!
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