When I tell my friends I’m attending the “World of Concrete” trade show, they usually dissolve into a spasm of laughter. What could possibly be interesting about concrete. It starts soft, it gets hard, you drive on it, end of story.
But to the 75,000 designers, consultants, craftsmen, builders, and developers that attend the event every year in Las Vegas, its something much more. Just looking at the list of seminars. The more than 170 classes cover everything from pouring to polishing, from repair to masonry, from decorative to mixing.
On display are huge machines that pump concrete hundreds of feet into the air and build roads, bridges, and yes, even parking structures.
I was fascinated when the city replaced the curbs around my block and I watched as the concrete came out of the mixer and was pumped into forms that moved with the mixer. It hardened almost instantly. I was told that this happened due to the mix of chemicals in the concrete. Pretty high tech stuff.
I’ll wander around and chat with a few folks that work with ‘mud’ and let you know what I find out.
JVH
One Response
Hi John, you don’t know me yet, but I just started as Director of Marketing at Parker Technology last week. However, in my former life I worked for a distributor in the concrete polishing industry, thus I’m very familiar with WOC (exhibited there for 5 years)! And it is indeed a trade show on steroids…there’s so much to see and learn. Hope it’s a good experience for you!