By Shannon Pratt / Quality Control Manager
It was nice to be able to attend this conference again, this makes about the 9th time I have been able to go in my 12 years in this industry. I won’t repeat everything the Captain has to say about our days at the Conference and contacts we made, but I will give you a little more information on the Co-Chair position I was given and some numbers I received at the Board meeting.
To start off, Eric was nice enough to drive me up on Saturday afternoon so I could attend a WEA Board meeting on Sunday morning. At the Board meeting I was introduced as the TN Co-Chair for the new Lab Procedures Committee. The Board has heard that there is a need for training and assistance in both states when it comes to wastewater lab analysis. My name was given to the Board a couple of months ago and after talking to the President Stefanie Farrell about my time at Fleming, Smyrna’s WWTP and now here at LabtronX, she felt I would be a good fit. Our goal will be to provide webinars annually and have a specialty conference every other year. We hope to be able to reach operators with minimal travel for everyone. We believe our focus will be on a Method Update Rule from 2012 that is still not fully addressed in either state that requires a level of quality control that was never required before. But we could also address issues such as nutrient testing (nitrogen, ammonia, nitrate, phosphorus) or that tricky BOD5 test that everyone loves so much.
The rest of our time at the Conference, we were surrounded by over 225 other vendors with booths and had a chance to see over 1400 attendees. Knoxville has always had high attendance. Next year the Conference will be held in Lexington, KY for 2017 and in 2018 it will be here in Nashville and we hope to see close to the same numbers. I am confident that LabtronX will have more of a presence at the future Conferences with speaking opportunities and more chances to volunteer.
