The Parking Industry Exhibition held last month in Chicago broke all attendance records with nearly 900 on site, including over 675 attendees and 200 exhibitor personnel. “We are extremely happy,” said event manager Andy Van Horn. “The exhibitors came to see attendees and we delivered.”
The event featured more than 40 seminars and presentations, opening with boot camp on Sunday. More than 75 who are new to the parking profession attended the three hour session. With breakout sessions in the afternoon covering Airports, Municipalities, and Universities the Sunday bootcamp covered three of the major aspects of the industry.
The next two and a half days brought seven hours of exhibition where attendees visited over 100 companies and dined elegantly on box lunches. Included were seminars ranging from wayfinding and graphics to lighting, sustainability, enforcement, to PPP in both the private sector and the university setting, There was a three hour seminar on automated parking systems, and multiple sessions on revenue control, auditing, and best practices.
The event organizers posted a sign that PIE would be back in 2013 but the dates and location were not announced.