SMRP Recap with Bill Leahy
The Society for Maintenance & Reliability Professionals (SMRP) Conference of 2019 attracted over 1200 professionals across fields of reliability, maintenance and physical asset management across the USA. The 2019 event was held in Louiseville Kentucky between 7th and 10th October 2019.
A few of our highlights from the event are:
- The topics of interest in booths
- What we liked most about the after-hour activities
- What we would do differently next time
Topics of interest in booths
As with any conference, booth visitors will tend towards not asking direct questions, but rather learning more about the company in there. For the few direct inquires we saw people gravitate towards:
- Looking for a planning and scheduling tool
- How to accelerate upscaling of junior engineers into roles of reliability engineers
- How to quickly train someone with a technical background into an industrial role like maintenance planning
Other tech trends did not miss the party. There was plenty of buzz around Industry 4.0 technologies like machine learning, artificial intelligence and even IoT devices like the Raspberry Pi
After-hour events we enjoyed
In Orlando, outside the conference, the nightlife was exciting as we would still bump into people from the event. We enjoyed good music, warm people and great food.
The bar has already been set quite high. Only time will tell what the next SMRP Conference in Colombus will bring
What would you do differently next time?
As a presenter
The major points of improvement are:
- Talk to people who had presented before. This can often help you avoid the common pitfalls a novice speaker would face. It would also help you set expectations for your slot, the audience, and the interactions
- Do a reconnaissance of the speaking room – audio-visual equipment, sitting arrangement to help you prepare
- If you’ll be moving around the room, opt for a lapel mic so as to avoid losing the audience on the sides and at the back.
- Rehearse as much as possible. The more you prepare, the smoother your delivery will be
As a booth operator
- Find time to walk into the track sessions. The booth is a great place to interact, but track sessions also allow you to be on the receiving end of new information
- Walk the exhibition floor to know what’s going on. You might harvest useful contacts along the way
As a practitioner
- Have a plan for the event. Know how many sessions you’ll attend, have a target contact persona, and follow-through.
- Talk to and meet new people outside your networks
The takeaways
The main points from this event would be to attend more track sessions and grow your network by meeting more people.
Eruditio Links:
Bill Leahy Links:
- SMRP Annual Conference
- Bill Leahy LinkedIn
- Developing Leadership in Maintenance and Reliability by Bill Leahy
- Key Performance Influencer with Bill Leahy
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