ASSP Safety 2024: Why the record attendance?
Attendees wait to enter the exhibit hall at ASSP Safety in Denver before it opens on Wednesday, August 7, 2024.
Photo: Benita Mehta
Denver - National conferences in safety held in the month of August are rare. Spring and fall are traditional conference times. The American Society of Safety Professionals’ annual meeting has been in June. This year it is in Denver the first full week in August due to the scheduled 2021 convention in Denver shifting to Austin, TX because Covid forced a downsizing in the meeting’s scale, and August was the available time this year at the Denver Convention Center.
So what to expect from this move to early August? Kids are still home. It’s vacation time. Business travel in general winds down in the summer months. No matter. The ASSP meeting had to cut off registration for this meeting. Attendance is at a record of approximately 6,500 professionals. Last year in San Antonio attendance was about 5,900. The number of exhibitors is about 650. Total influx of people related to this year’s meeting is around 10,000. All this information has been provided to ISHN by Blaine Krage, ASSP’s senior media relations specialist.
So, the next question: why the record number of attendees? What’s happening? In an exclusive interview with ISHN, ASSP Chief Executive Officer Jennifer McNelly points to these factors:
- Safety is a lonely profession. Sometimes the professional is the lone voice speaking for safety in the workplace. The conference provides a sense of belonging, connection and community. As one attendee said, ‘These people speak my language’. Attendees can meet, greet and network with their own peers in specific industries, such as construction, manufacturing, mining, and special interests such as women in safety
- The world is changing and safety needs to keep track of the trends. AI is one example. Technology is certainly changing the role of professionals.
- “The conference has always put a prime value on education. Professionals come here to learn. Take technology for example. The exposition gives attendees a chance to interact and get a hands-on experience with innovation. This cuts across many products and services.
- “The opportunity is here at the conference to de-mystify technology in safety.”
- The conference is designed for professionals to come here and learn to be the very best at safety – in a format designed for the personalization of learning. ASSP’s Career Advancement Center is all about careers being more than LinkedIn profile, for example. It is focused on coaching, mentoring, building connections, leadership in the changing workplace and empathetic leadership.
The CEO’s comments aside, consider too economics. Business travel is slowly but surely rebounding from the pandemic years. And there is the risk of working in a silo, detached from frontline realities, especially thanks to AI and other changing workforce demographics. Forbes magazine recently quoted one of the country’s most famed CEOs, Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan chairman and CEO, discussing the importance of frequent business travel. “Complacency and politics is the petri dish of death. The antidote is always learning and being curious,” said Dimon.
Forbes called Dimon’s advice a wake-up call to CEOs. And when it comes to the ASSP conference’s record attendance, consider what may be factor by this time in the summer – and in the comeback from Covid – pros are ready to break out, refresh, network, and learn.
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