It’s no secret speakers sometimes go out of their way to come up with a catchy title to fill a room with attendees. This is much more common in the safety field than say industrial hygiene, where many session topics are narrow and technical.

Anyway, at this year’s Congress & Expo, speakers are again playing games with their presentation titles. Here is a selection of them:

From car phones to car crash risk

Captains Courageous: Lessons in safety leadership

When Nobody’s watching

How to avoid a cultural faux pas

Inside out: Rethinking safety management

Be who you are!

Bankruptcy begins with poor safety

"You Power!” for young professionals

Safety: It’s a jungle out there

Dare to lead

The buried truth uncovered

Stupidity or change blindness – you be the judge

When smart people do dumb things

Getting to zero: Really?

Within the DNA of our culture lies a masterpiece

What is missing? Very few educational sessions on OSHA compliance. It seems we’ve entered the phase of safety’s evolution where OSHA is a given, at least for the professionals attending conferences such as the Congress and Expo, ASSE’s annual conference, and the American Industrial Hygiene Conference and Expo.

What’s apparent? There is more of a focus on YOU the safety professional than ever. Call it the personalization of safety. It’s not about LOTO procedures, engineering controls, PPE, even training and management systems. It’s about lecturing safety pros on being change agents, being more aggressive, more business savvy, leaders with influence who can created dissonance and discomfort about safety vulnerabilities in their organizations. All of this is not some form of self-help, but it raising the bar of professionalism.