Mailbox? Try Inbox
David K. Scheetz | TLT President's Report February 2010
STLE unveils the technical program of the 2010 Annual Meeting & Exhibition in an all-digital format.
Check your e-mail for STLE’s digital brochure, which has all the details on our 2010 Annual Meeting & exhibition.
This is the time of the year when STLE traditionally mails you a fairly thick brochure containing details of the society’s upcoming annual meeting. The brochure is eagerly awaited because it is the first unveiling of the conference’s technical program.
If you’ve been puzzling about why your brochure hasn’t arrived yet, stop looking in your mailbox and take a look in your Inbox. For the first time STLE is publishing the brochure in an all-digital format.
Now the information in the 116-page brochure hasn’t changed. You’ll still find the titles of all the technical papers plus detailed descriptions of the education courses, trade show and the other events that for more than six decades have helped lubrication professionals increase their technical knowledge and develop their job skills.
The brochure shares the same format as the digital TLT you’ve been receiving for almost a year now. You can flip pages, navigate from one section to another with a click of the mouse, link directly to an advertiser’s Web site and download the brochure to your computer’s hard drive. You also can link directly from the brochure to several online forms, which means you can register for the meeting, make your sleeping room reservation and even sign up for the golf tournament or a tour without pen ever touching paper.
The digital brochure, e-mailed to you in mid-January, will be resent this month and again in March. You also can access it 24/7 on
www.stle.org.
But while the brochure has changed, the meeting itself retains all the elements that has made it the premier event in the lubricants industry. This year’s meeting, at Bally’s Hotel & Conference Center in Las Vegas, is May 16-20. Las Vegas has been the venue for several of STLE’s most popular and successful annual meetings because all events are within a few footsteps of each other in Bally’s Conference Center. With hundreds of restaurants and the world’s fi nest entertainment just a short cab ride away, Las Vegas also is a fantastic city for corporate members looking to entertain customers.
STLE’s conference is a multifaceted and progressive technical program that meets the needs of both those involved with practical lubrication issues and tribology research. The Annual Meeting Planning Committee, chaired by Arup Gangopadhyay with Ford Motor Co., has done its usual outstanding job. We have some 360 technical presentations, 10 one-day education courses, the exhibition, the popular Commercial Marketing Forum, the all-new Corporate Luncheon Symposiums and an international networking experience.
Like 2009, this year promises to be a challenging one for the lubricants industry. Organizations are looking to stretch every operational dollar. On that score, STLE’s 2010 meeting delivers in a big way.
The member fee for the five-day meeting is a very affordable $535. For just a little more than $100 a day you can participate in five days of industry-specific professional development that just isn’t available anywhere else.
Las Vegas remains one of the most affordable cities in the world—that’s why it hosts some 24,000 conventions annually. The city has responded to the most significant economic challenge in its history by lowering prices across the board. STLE recently renegotiated our agreement with Bally’s to bring room rates down to $75 a night, $45 for Thursday, the last day of the meeting.
So why, in this tough business climate, should you come to STLE?
If your organization has a history of success, most likely it’s because your key people keep abreast of new technologies, upgrade their technical skills, closely tend to their customer relationships and forge contacts with peers who can help them solve today’s real-world lubrication issues. That encompasses everything STLE’s meeting is about.
Despite the economy, this is not the time to stop doing the very things that have made your organization successful. I urge you to make every effort to attend our 2010 conference and continue your company’s commitment to excellence.
I’ll look forward to seeing you there for what promises to be another outstanding event.
Dave Scheetz, CLS, is an equipment builder engineer for ExxonMobil Lubricants & Specialties. You can reach him at david.k.scheetz@exxonmobil.com.