Circle December 1–3 on your calendar. Those are the dates for MAINTECH, a new conference and trade show for the maintenance and reliability community sponsored by Maintenance Technology Magazine. We plan to hold it twice a year, the first one this December in Houston.

Why another conference and trade show? To provide an additional opportunity for you to get the information you need. . .network with the people you need to know. . .and check out current technologies and services. . .to help you be more effective and your company more profitable.

I’m very excited because conferences and trade shows are among my favorite activities. I’ve been to all kinds of events. I’ve been a committeeman, speaker, exhibitor, and attendee. I have been crushed by the crowd, cooked by body heat in small meeting rooms, frozen by air conditioning in auditoriums, and awed and embarrassed by speakers. I have had an opportunity to question the famous and not so famous in press conferences and question and answer sessions. And I’ve enjoyed every minute of it. Perhaps that is why I became a reporter and editor—to have an opportunity to participate in technical conferences and trade shows every month of the year.

Not everyone is as fortunate as I am when it comes to attending conferences. You probably have tighter time constraints and a more restricted travel budget than I do. So you have to choose. mainTech South ’98 will provide another choice (we think the best choice), perhaps a better mix of topics and exhibits for your needs, and possibly be held closer to home.

The program is designed to cover the business and technology of maintenance management. You will be able to choose from 30 sessions presented in five simultaneous tracks: corporate strategy, maintenance and reliability operations, condition assessment technologies, information management technologies, and the human side of managing change. Check out the article on page 32 for more information.

This year’s event is set up to provide a conference with enabling content delivered in seminar, panel, and case study formats by over 100 practitioners and experts. A series of educational workshops has been planned for the day preceding the conference. It has all been designed to support the action-oriented manager.

If you need to work more effectively with financials, technology, information, or people, there is a seat for you in Houston on December 1–3. I hope to see you there. MT