Once again the World of Concrete and our Winter Meeting has come and gone, and we all prepare for a busy spring season. We all returned home from Vegas with pictures of the newest tools, thoughts from a seminar or two, and ideas gleaned from conversations with fellow members, rolling around in our heads.

Seeing the equipment is wonderful, the seminars are enlightening, the parties are always entertaining, but what I enjoy the most is getting to spend some time with all of you. You, the collective membership of the CFA, are the brains and spirit that keep the residential foundation universe spinning! Each and every one of you has a story to share, an idea that will spread, and a problem to solve. Most importantly, you are willing to share it…what a group! Family can mean a lot of things to a lot of different people, however, I feel that we are truly a family of family-minded businesses after returning from such an event. I hope you feel that way too.

We continue our struggle for the perfect Winter Meeting. We have learned from past years that excessive noise or entertainment makes it hard to talk…what we are really wanting to do most. We want plenty of good food and drink. The vote seems to be split between the desire for a chair and table space for every one, or standing room only so that we mingle more and meet newer members. This year we again broke all attendance records, and had some unexpected problems. About 35% of the folks in the  room had registered in the last 5 days preceding it. This is great, we were glad you were there, but we hope you will understand that it makes it hard to plan. We had long lines in the hall waiting to get in; Jim tells me next year there will be two lines, the SpeedPass lane for those who remembered their badges and one for those who will need to find their badge in the staff back-up folder and present it at the entrance. Registration monitoring is critical to our protection of this event both financially and functionally. I also heard a lot of comments that there was not enough food or variety of “substantial” food. Unfortunately, we are somewhat at the mercy of the hotel on the quality of the food and the service. We are committed to improving food options such as adding carving stations next year.

If everyone present had half as good a time as I did, the meeting was a resounding success. Once again we need to thank our sponsors for their support. Be sure to locate them in the wrap-up article found on pages 38 and 39. They all deserve our thanks for their commitment!

Please drop us a line if you have other ideas for the Winter Meeting, we will try to incorporate them into our planning.