Dave Johnson

“We were up in a customer focus group in Milwaukee not long ago. We had companies there from Fortune 100 to mom and pops,” said the VP of safety for a major distributor. “I’d say seven out of ten had had recent brushes with OSHA. So OSHA is still a big driver of sales, no doubt about it.”

No, they didn’t turn off the lights and locked the doors. The show definitely goes on, and when you’re inside the expo or attending education sessions, the ugly world of federal government shutdowns seems far far away.

1 – Ties are out. The men’s tie business must be dying a slow death. Of 13,000 people at the Congress and Expo, you might count the number wearing ties on one hand. OK, maybe on both hands. Business casual rules, no doubt. Many attendees are comfortable in jeans and sports shirt. You don’t see many suits at all. Mostly it is the speakers in suits. And certainly not all of them.

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:

At a Tuesday session at the 2013 NSC Congress & Expo, former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill, OSHA boss Dr. David Michaels, and NIOSH director Dr. John Howard discussed the “future of safety.” Who’s to say what the future holds, right? And predictions about the future are soon forgotten. Here are some of ISHN’s predictions for the future of safety:

Here at the 2013 NSC Congress & Expo, an Egyptian surgeon, Alaa Zidan, who now works as a health and safety consultant in Bahrain, gave a presentation, “Positive Safety Culture and Emotional Intelligence,” that was probably unlike any safety presentation most in the audience had ever heard.

Spend a day talking to safety pros and safety product trainers, consultants and PPE vendors and one thing strikes you: a new vocabulary is emerging in safety circles. You hear little talk about OSHA or compliance.

Why are companies not known for selling safety products, such as Staples, Cintas, Caterpillar, Honeywell, and Kimberly-Clark all here at the 2013 NSC Congress & Expo -- a number of them with expansive floor space?

The NSC Congress & Expo takes on more of an international flavor each year. As per usual in recent years, you have the “China Village,” a group of dozens of small mostly PPE Chinese suppliers separated by thin white pegboard walls.