Over the past two weeks I have visited both the SEMA trade show and the International Maintenance Conference. While very different events, they do have a common theme.
SEMA is the world’s largest automotive aftermarket tradeshow and is put on by the Specialty Equipment Market Association (SEMA). The focus is parts and equipment for the automotive aftermarket (that is for after you have bought your car) and approximately 120,000 people attend the event (wow!). SEMA is held in Las Vegas, Nevada.
The International Maintenance Conference is part of the Solutions 2.0 Conference and is presented by the team at Reliability Web. This event is held in Fort Myers, Florida. While somewhat smaller than SEMA, this conference non-the-less enables significant learning opportunities for its attendees. The focus is establishing and maintaining steady state manufacturing, mining and process operations to enable improved productivity and profitability. At this conference I presented a paper on Spare Parts Best Practice Management and conducted a spare parts management coaching session.
So what do these two apparently different events have in common? Aside from the attendees at both events seeking input and advice to enable improved materials and spare parts management (hence my attendance) the common theme is the opportunity for attendees to learn more to help them perform better in their relevant industries.
Both events include educational streams and have a tradeshow expo where vendors can demonstrate their wares and prowess. This gives the attendees the opportunity to hear about the latest trends, review case studies, learn best practices, and compare a wide range of market solutions in just a few days. The only real danger from these events is managing the flood of information that is available!
The people that attend these events learn plenty and give themselves and their companies an edge over those that do not attend. And, in this day and age, almost any edge is worth the effort.
So, are you getting the learning edge? If not I highly recommend that you attend either the SEMA Show or the International Maintenance Conference in 2011.
In the next few days I will post some video from both events.
