If you’ve been a Landfill Engineer long enough, you’ll be expected in attendance at a number of these industry gatherings each year. Time and money are limited, so we have to choose wisely amongst the wide array available.

By  Adam Jochelson

April 10, 2017: The TxSWANA conference started in San Antonio. This annual gathering of dedicated professionals and members of the Lonestar Chapter of the Solid Waste Association of North America is always a crowd favorite. And like the first robins of spring, it’s an indicator that the busy waste conference season is ready to roll. This will be the first one I’ve missed in a long time.

If you’ve been a Landfill Engineer long enough, you’ll be expected in attendance at a number of these industry gatherings each year. Ranging from large international events to regional conferences, broad-based symposia to topic-specific forums, each of them has something valuable to offer. But time and money are limited, so we have to choose wisely amongst the wide array available.

How you make those choices depends on the goals you hope to achieve by attending. General attendees usually hope to earn some professional development or continuing education hours to help maintain their various licenses. Vendors typically hope to gain significant face time with decision makers for organizations with purchasing power. And of course, everyone at any event has at least one goal in common, to have some fun with friends.

Over the years, I’ve attended many of these gatherings around the country, so I can share some insight that may help you determine the best ones to serve your professional goals. That can wait for another time—today, I’ll share some stories that can help you know which events may provide the most entertainment and will help me avoid the melancholy of missing this year’s show in Texas. Maybe I’ll raise a toast at happy hour tonight to TxSWANAs past and present.

Large National Events—Hip to Be Square

The event with the largest exhibit hall each year is Waste Expo. If you go to Waste Expo, keep your ears open for evening events sponsored by the large vendors. If you circulate enough and make the right connections you may be able to score a pass to some unique entertainment opportunities. Case in point: at Waste Expo 2015 in Las Vegas, I ended up at the House of Blues for a private event that included complimentary food and drinks and a performance by the immortal Huey Lewis and the News! It was great—and all my junior high school friends would have agreed.

SWANA organizes a couple of big nationwide events each year:  WASTECON® and SWANApalooza. The former is the larger of the two, but the latter is often situated in a place with some geographical allure. I’ve been to many of each of them (more than I can even remember—especially considering that SWANApalooza is a combined event of what used to be several different Symposia). But the two most memorable for me were when the Landfill Symposium was held in Monterey, CA in 2006 and again as SWANApalooza in 2014.  As an attendee of both the conference and an associated training course in 2006, I spent almost a whole week in Monterey, during which I rented a bicycle to enjoy daily rides along the boardwalk. In 2014, as a presenter, I opted to stay in town just long enough to make my presentation, after which my girlfriend flew up for a drive down the coastline of the Pacific Coast Highway. Three days of incredible scenery and no cell phone coverage were about as relaxing as it can get, something I can highly recommend if you ever have the chance.

State Events Provide Local Flair

The majority of states in America have an organization dedicated to waste management professionals. Many of them are affiliated with a larger group like SWANA (e.g. TxSWANA), but others are not (like SDSWMA in South Dakota). Lots of larger vendors skip these—opting to focus on the bigger shows. But every one of these provides some local flair that’s worth seeing at least once, maybe more.

I have nothing but praise for my visit to the North Carolina SWANA Spring Conference. It’s one of the larger state conferences with nearly 300 attendees each year. The 2015 event happened to be hosted in Asheville, which sports a lively music scene and a healthy selection of local craft beer artisans, both of which contributed to my enjoyment of the event.

A bit more focused on the challenges associated with operating smaller facilities are the annual events in South Dakota and Minnesota. Not affiliated with any national group, the South Dakota Solid Waste Management Association hosts two events each year—a trade show in the fall and an operator’s conference in the spring. Their hospitality is hard to beat, and South Dakota is gorgeous in the spring. Plus, it gave me chance to add to my list of U.S. states visited. I hear Minnesota in also spectacular in the spring, but I wouldn’t know. My only visit there was to present at MN SWANA’s annual conference in February. Though I may take issue with scheduling such an event during a period with continuous single-digit temperatures, it did afford me the opportunity to enjoy some extremely competitive high school hockey playoffs and to see an amazing performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the incomparable Guthrie Theater—both experiences that I will never forget.

Of course, there will always be a special place in my heart for the TxSWANA conference every April. I’ve been a part of almost all of them in one way or another since 2003, and each one is as different from each other as the diverse array of host cities across this vast state. From the coastal breezes in Corpus Christi, where you might encounter some late spring break revelers, to the windswept plains of Lubbock and Amarillo, where you’ll find some the best steaks in Texas, the tune-filled streets of Austin, our state capital known the world over for its live music, and the rugged western outpost of El Paso, which might include a cross-border trip to a bullfight or two—no two conferences are alike. My personal favorite was the 2006 TxSWANA conference, which we hosted right here in Dallas with a Medieval knights theme complete with a dinner jousting tournament. I put my Photoshop skills work designing the program for that conference, and I even had the chance to moderate one of the presentation sessions.

Laissez Les Bons Temps Rouler

But if you want to see one of the hidden gems of the annual waste management tour, you must visit the Louisiana Solid Waste Association’s Annual Conference in Lafayette. This is one of the most well-attended state conferences I have ever visited. This is partly because it’s always in Lafayette, which is a convenient drive from almost anywhere in the state. But it’s mostly because of the food. Anyone who’s been to Louisiana knows they take their food seriously—and the LSWA Annual Conference is no exception. The biggest attraction is their famous crawfish boil, which draws not just conference attendees but family and friends who are lucky enough to get a ticket. But believe me, every meal is a Cajun delight—they even hand out their own LSWA branded “Season-All,” which I can tell you livens up any dish. If this commentary convinces you that it might be worth treading outside the beaten path once a year to check out one these local events, trust me: put this one at the top of your list.

Adam Jochelson, P. E., MOLO, is a Principal Engineer at DHR Engineering, Inc. (Irving, TX). He’s also the CEO of Modern Landfill Engineering Services (Dallas, TX) where he promotes the application of cutting edge technologies to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of landfill operations. Adam built his knowledge and techniques over a nine-year period as the on-site engineer at McCommas Bluff Landfill in Dallas, TX. He can be reached at (214) 789-2326 or e-mail [email protected] or [email protected].

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