Grapevine, Rain, Bloomington and More Rain

I have recently finished up a quick two week jaunt to attend and exhibit at two different expos in the HVACR industry.

The first was at the regional expo of the North Texas Chapter of the ACCA (Air Conditioning Contractors Association) held in Grapevine TX. My wife Kathy accompanied me on this trip leaving St. Louis on October 21. We drove. The trip was very fast and very uneventful taking the interstate only route down Interstate 44 all the way from St. Louis to Oklahoma City, then down I-35 almost directly on top of Grapevine, which is a fascinating town that is part of the Dallas Fort Worth metroplex. The only drag on the trip down was the weather: gray to OKC, then rain all the way down to Grapevine. And the rain stayed with us the entire time down there. As a matter of fact the rain was cold and the entire locale was at best, dreary.

Grapevine, irregardless of the weather, is a very cool place. It is an example of urban renewal on a sensible scale. The main drag through town is completely fresh with architecture that is either very good refurbs of old buildings or new construction keeping with the old town theme. That is combined with a very built up shopping, buisness, transportation and residential surrounding community. It all works very well together.

The expo itself was a decent enough affair. There were two other software companies there but we were the only company offering business development services with software as one of the keystone pieces. Attendance was light. There was a technical school exhibiting and I guess they put the word out that their students should come in and check things out. That is fine, but there were way too many of them and they sucked some of the air out the event. For the investment I would have like to see more businesses there. I would seriously have to consider the advisability of attending another one unless I could get the booth comped in exchange for me conducting a break out session.

We returned to St. Louis on Friday with some sunshine and since we took the traditional eastern route from Plano up through Oklahoma we got to see all of the indian casinos. What is with that anyway?

The next week I ran solo to Bloomington MN to exhibit at the international RSES (Residential Service Engineer Society) convention. The drive on that Wednesday was uneventful, except for, you guessed it, it rained. And of course it rained the entire time up there.

This event was much more to my liking as an exhibitor. Many more owners and executive level attendees and I represented the only software and business development vendor there. (I received a very nice complement that I was the only exhibitor there for the owners. Nice.) I was very pleased with the level of contact made there. As a matter of fact, in talking to some of the regional directors that attended I have secured one of these quid pro quo exhibition for booth arrangements with one region already, and I am confident that I will be able to make other similar arrangements. A big thumbs up.

On a side note, the Mall of America was situated almost exactly between my hotel, a very nice Quality Inn, and the Hilton Hotel that was the site of the convention. I did pull into one of the mall garages, parked, went in and promptly got lost. Wow, that place is huge and way too over the top for me. The only thing that saved me was that I noted that a "Barbi" Store (as in the doll) was by my entrance. I finally had to go a map and find that store again for me to find my way back to my car again. Strange but true.

I would like to make a business related note, maybe more in tune with some of the hvac people I talked to in Texas. There was I think a much greater ignorance (and I don't mean that as a slur) of the importance of proper business practices and standards, operational proficiency and marketing prowess. This is in contrast to the people at the RSES event whom were very willing, even eager to talk about ways that could improve how they conducted their businesses operationally. I think part of the reason was that while each convention did have segments on marketing neither of them had any programs on how to run a business, but the attendees at the RSES convention were more owners that have stepped out of their trucks and were actually managing their businesses on a daily basis. And I think that this is one of the biggest challenges that the service industry has, as well I came to understand this as a consultant with AirTime500. Most of these people are technicians and they need to learn being a manager is as important a job function as being a technician, and there is a huge need for business practices training, even of the most elementary kind.

More later.