摘要: |
Eleven leaders from the geosynthetics industry came together in Washington, D.C., Oct. 19-20, 2021, to participate in GMA fall Lobby Day 2021. During Lobby Day, GMA members advocated for specific language related to geosynthetics in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), then under consideration in the House of Representatives. The IIJA was subsequently passed and signed into law, with the language GMA supported included. For more on GMA's fall 2021 Lobby Day, see the article on page 11.Were you there? If not, you missed the return to an in-person geosynthetics conference and a chance to reunite with your industry peers. GeoNashville 2021, Nov. 4-5, included an all-plenary program of more than 1.5 days in the Music City. Due to pandemic shutdowns, the earlier-in-2021 biennial gathering of the Geosynthetics Conference pivoted to the Geosynthetics Virtual Conference 2021, Feb. 22-25. This, subsequently, meant that there would not be a major North American geosynthetics conference after the Geosynthetics Conference 2020: Case Studies in Charleston, S.C. (Mar. 8-10,2020), until the Geosynthetics Conference/IECA Annual Conference and Expo 2023, a span of almost three years. In discussions with Barbara Connett, secretary general of the conference, we recognized an opportunity to hold the first in-person geosynthetics conference at the same location as and just after IFAI Expo, Nov. 1-4, 2021, in Nashville, Tenn. In only six months, we were able to coordinate four plenary presenters, sell out the exhibit hall and create the first all-in-one-room geosynthetics conference (in hopes of allowing the exhibitors to hear the presentations). While the all-in-one concept had a few issues, for the most part it produced our end desire of having all attendees being able to access the complete program. The attendance was better than we had anticipated, and the attendees were very pleased to be back in person. |