The Setting
Last week, I attended ISFA’s 2016 Annual Meeting and Conference in Cancun.
Moraware is a strong advocate for ISFA events. We believe fabricators should attend them whenever possible. Most events are regional – keep an eye on their calendar to see when one is happening near you.
This year, the annual meeting and conference was held at a beautiful resort in Cancun. Many fabricators brought their spouses along, and my wife Paula came with me as well. It was a nice way to mix business with fun.
The Business
There was real business, too, including presentations from fabricators on several interesting topics. I was particularly intrigued to see the “international” in ISFA – members of ISFA China attended and shared some impressive slides of their work.
As usual, the biggest value from such an event is meeting with your peers. The presentations fostered further conversations on issues ranging from craft (“how’d they DO that?”) and business (“how to avoid being stiffed”) and safety (“you can replace equipment – you can’t replace a life”).
I’ll follow up soon with some StoneTalk interviews of fabricators who attended to give you more detail.
The Award!
This year’s event was extra special for Moraware, because we received an award – “Associate of the Year” for 2016. This award recognizes our contributions to the industry beyond our software, including our blog and podcast. We work hard to make content that’s interesting and useful to people in our industry, whether or not you’re our customer. We do this because we believe that our success depends on fabricators being successful. We’re extremely thankful and quite proud that ISFA recognized us for these efforts. We’ll continue to work hard to bring you useful information.
Again, the key is learning from your peers. That’s what makes StoneTalk useful, and that’s what makes events like the ISFA Annual Meeting and Conference useful. Whenever and however you get a chance to exchange ideas with other people in your industry, you should probably take advantage of the opportunity.
