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As a partner organization to EC06, geosynthetica arrived at the Conference on Tuesday evening to set up a booth in the Exposition Hall, which, this year, held ~170 exhbitors in the Long Beach, CA. Convention Center, February 20-24, 2006.
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| geosynthetica Premium Underwriter Colbond occupied one of the 170 booths at EC06 |
The Hall’s Grand Opening started at 5:00 pm and invited attendees to walk the show floor for an hour and a half before heading over to the Aquarium of the Pacific Reception. The completely rented out Aquarium resounded with the rearranged songs such as "Stand by Your Spec" and "Back in the Wattle Again" by a six member country band.
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| EC06 reception in the Aquarium of the Pacific, Long Beach, CA. |
Before arriving at the Aquarium, geosynthetica visited Erosion Control Blanket’s launch party promoting "the world’s first television show dedicated to the Erosion & Sediment Control Industry," Dirt Time with John McCullah. Dirt Time’s first full season is available on DVD and can be found at www.dirttimeTV.com.
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| Dirt Time was launched at the Erosion Control Blanket party. |
The Opening Session on Wednesday started with Awards presentations where two Environmental Acheivement Awards were given to Steven Gucciardi, CPESC, for Charlotte’s Local Program Approach to Erosion & Sedimentation Control and Zong-Wen Liao, South China Agricultural University, for Applications of Organic Hyrdomulching System in Hong Kong. Keynote Speaker Tim Palmer, foremost national river conservationist, addressed major problems rivers face such as polluted runoff, erosion and the loss of riparian habitat.
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| Opening Session included award presentations and Keynote Speaker im Palmer. |
Opening Session closed with the announcement of next year’s conference in Reno, NV. and an invitation to join IECA’s traditional wet and wild, "Hydrodeo" outside in the parking lot where teams compete with each other finding new and interesting ways to use erosion control equipment in events like the Hose Mosey, Wattle Doggin’, Team Penning, and Hydro-Jousting.
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| Wattle Doggin" at the Hydrodeo |
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| Getting a little wet during the Hydro-Jousting |
Our first full day in the Expo Hall passed quickly as we met engineers and designers very familiar with geosynthetica and a few others new to geosynthetics, our site and what it has to offer. Premium Underwriters enjoyed the benefit of having their samples and marketing materials displayed in our booth, just one of the many advantages of our highest levels of Underwriting on the site (learn more).
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| geosynthetica.net’s booth at EC06 where Premium Underwriters can take advantage of the space to display their materials. |
At the end of the day, we were kindly invited by Lynne Finney of North American Green (a gsa Underwriter) to their Party Gras 2006 Celebration in the Hyatt Regency Beacon Ballroom & Rotunda. What a party! We were greeted with crawfish shooters, martinis and jazz. Thank you to North American Green for a fabulous spread.
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| Lynne Finney, Marketing Manager and Greg Deegan, VP of Sales for North American Green greet party-goers at the door of their Party gras 2006 celebration. |
After another full day of sessions and exhibitions in the hall, EC06 concluded with Field Day at the Beach. The event brought classroom training together with onsite demonstrations and installations to show attendees proper application and maintenance of today’s most popular BMPs. Nearly 200 people were on-hand to learn about steep slope stabilization, channel stabilization, inlet protection and the use of rolled erosion control products (RECPs). Equipment demonstrations included silt fence machines, water filtration and monitoring systems, compact excavators and more rounded out the morning. Stabilization of Junipero Bluff, the site of the field day, is a priority for the City of Long Beach. As part of the initial work to stabilize this 2:1 slope, the hydraulically applied materials used in the field day demonstration were left on the slope.
