I’m in Louisville, KY right now for this year's Utility Expo. It’s great to be back amongst 19,000 of our peers and discuss damage prevention. I’ve been lucky to make some great friends within the industry and so this inaugural Shane's Scooparticle is the product of some of the different discussions I’ve been having here at the show mixed in with some of the new products and services present present here.

THE JOBSITE

Here's a quick breakdown of what the show looked like for us as an exhibitor in The Jobsite area

• We had our booth outside in a tent which we shared with Pelican who were showing their Geolantis mapping solution

• We took part in Mapping the Future of Damage Prevention with Screening Eagle Technologies, PelicanCorp, GeoPoint Surveying Utilocate and Miller Pipeline

• We brought all the mapping information from Screening Eagle, PelicanCorp and GeoPoint into Utilocate and displayed it out our marketable map viewer and then collated all the information into a deliverable PDF for Miller so they could bore

• I also presented an educational session on Finding Clarity in your Tickets showing how Utilocate and UExcavateclose the gap on blindspots for damage prevention professionals from ticket creation all the way to the excavator

• The guys at Planet Underground recorded our educational sessions so e'll be able to make them available for you soon

• Some of our clients stopped by to see our sketching tools too and say hi

• Our regular booth got pretty good traffic too with Kyle Winters at the helm
  

HIGHLIGHTS

This was our first year exhibiting as a company so I didn't really know what to expect but we had a real positive response (pun intended) to being here. Some of the best things I seen were:

• https://visionbyscope.com - an automated rope integrity checker with built in AI

• The size of the Altec booth

• Meeting Dexter Page Jr., Allan Williams, Patrick Baldwin and everyone else who I haven't added yet

• The sheer breadth of equipment and solutions in the utility industry - there's room for everyone.

• Seeing a Canoo for the first time

• Mike Parilac launching the Certified Locator and Duane Rodgers standing at our podium 😉

• Hanging out with our team from Competers Inc.

LOWLIGHTS

Here's a few things that didn't go so well:

• Trying to get people into our educational sessions was like herding cats - thankfully we captured it all on video

• The weather - I like the heat but standing outside all day in it can be a bit much and then we got some rain which resulted in mud. But I guess that made our jobsite more realistic

HOSPITALITY

The first night we went to the Screening Eagle event where Patrick Baldwin was presenting their new product launch. And of course we had to stop by the Altec event downtown and the Utility Rocks concert last night. We might have been guilty of singing along too hard to Living on a Prayer too - shout out Sean Cloghessy and Travis from Pushys Online

CONCLUSION

Overall 2023 The Utility Expo has been a great event for us as exhibitors and attendees both in terms of relationship building and exposure. It would be a little light on damage prevention if it weren't for the efforts of Planet Underground so we appreciate their foresight in putting the Jobsite together!

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