With more than 5,700 attendees and a fantastic turn out at ISRI’s National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) Luncheon, I think that this year’s event was a huge success. Our booth in the exhibition hall served a purpose, but the luncheon hall has turned into a “show” all in itself. For the past 2 years we have designed an entrance path that forces all attendees to pass through our “gauntlet” of recycling displays. This year we had nonferrous metals on one side and all other commodities on the other. We used a combination of full sized bales with “mini” bales (2’x2’x2’) with table top displays in the entry way. That was all in the shadow of our larger display of a LARGE material handler reaching its grapple down on a crushed car on a flatbed trailer. Then the flatbed also had large bin samples of Shredded Steel, Zorba, and ASR. The attendees seemed very impressed and asked a lot of questions.
Although this is only the second NCSL event I have attended, I believe that our presence specifically at the Luncheon and the Late Night Party are well worth the investment. Nowhere else will we ever get the opportunity to get our message in front of more individuals that are responsible for state government than in this setting. The booth, by itself, would be almost useless because ISRI would be one of several hundred others “selling their issues.”
This event has also proved to be a great event for the host chapter to pull their members together and show off what they can do. The chapter was fantastic to work with and extremely well organized.
If you can’t tell, I love this event. I think it is very important for ISRI, and the opportunity to host the luncheon gives us a “large canvas” by which to present our message.
Randy Goodman is executive vice president for Greenland America, Inc., an ISRI member. This blog is part of a series written by ISRI members who attended NCSL offering their perspective and a behind the scenes look.