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The Oregon Surveyor
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Vol. 40, No. 1
12
2017 PLSO Conference
By Jered McGrath, PLSO Conference Chair
2017 Conference Recap
T
he 2017 Professional Land Surveyors of Oregon
Conference held at the Sheraton Portland Airport
Hotel has come to a close, and all I can say is what a
year! From a conference planning standpoint, there
is nothing worse than hearing a major winter storm
is brewing and scheduled to hit over the days of
your event. Adding to that, the airport had multiple
cancelled flights and we had to ride out the storm
to see if scheduled speakers could catch their flight
into town. These conditions may deter others but not
surveyors. The ice storm was predicted, unavoidable
and right on schedule, but people pushed on and
made it to the conference despite the doom and
gloom predictions. Some folks had to wait for the all
clear from the state DOT’s to travel through the gorge
but even then, those individuals persevered and would
not be held back. Every single participant in this year’s
conference from volunteers, to vendors, to sponsors
and attendee’s should be commended for coming
together through adversity and making this year’s
conference one of the best I have been a part of in a
long time. I felt a great energy this year and believe
that was generated from a combination of having good
food, interesting programing and a dynamic group of
hardened individuals who scoff at the reports of bad
weather and horrid traffic.
The conference committee held our post-con-
ference closeout meeting and emailed a final
survey questionnaire to attendee’s for feedback.
Your response is highly beneficial in understanding
attendee experiences this year and for planning future
conferences.
We did have a couple unfortunate cancelations
due to the weather keeping our speakers out of
town, but believe we were lucky the program could
accommodate and absorb these scheduling gaps.
I’d also like to give a shout out to Lee Spurgeon for
stepping in and filling the time slot of one of those
cancelled classes. Not a short order for most, but Lee
was up to the challenge.
Many positive comments were received on the
program content and improvements and suggestions
for next year have been noted. We will continue to
create a program with class size in mind and, after
reviewing the attendee counts for each class this year,
we were pleasantly surprised that many, if not all,
had an equitable distribution of attendee’s. While
some sessions had people standing, it was usually
because they preferred to be able to make an easy exit
when needed.
Below is the attendee numbers and breakdown for this
year’s conference:
•
234
Corporate Members
•
67
Associate Members
•
12
Guests
•
42
Non Members
•
13
Life members
•
14
students
•
9
OIT Volunteers
•
20
Special/Retired/Committee
•
29
Vendors
•
32
Speakers
•
472
Total attendees
(plus or minus, depending on if some checked
in properly).
What a great year, with a great group. Once all of the
bills are accounted for and numbers are final, they will
be presented at the next board meeting together with
the finance report.
In closing, this year’s conference was only
accomplished in part by a large collection of tireless
hours of volunteering and commitments from
conference committee members present and past,
board members, and you, the participant. Thank
you for your continued support in the past, present
and future. Now, let the planning for the 2018 PLSO
Conference at the Salem Conference Center begin.
Save the dates of January 17-19, 2018!
Congratulations
to our Award Winners!
Lifetime Membership:
Gary DeJarnatt
Contagious Attitude Award:
Chris Glantz
Article of the Year:
“For the Life of the Chicken” by Lee Spurgeon