Wind Energy Conferences: Are They Worth it?

Rosemary just got back from a conference and, like many of us recently, feels discouraged. Attendees and meetings were insightful, but the presentations and panels lacked impact. Allen has often felt the same. The two unpack their issues with recent wind energy conferences and discuss possible solutions to make them more valuable. Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard's StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes' YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Pardalote Consulting - https://www.pardaloteconsulting.comWeather Guard Lightning Tech - www.weatherguardwind.comIntelstor - https://www.intelstor.com Allen Hall: Welcome to the special edition of the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I'm your host, Allen Hall, along with my great co host, Rosemary Barnes, who is just back, fresh back from the Australia Wind Energy 2024 Conference in, of all places, Melbourne, Australia. And Rosemary and I were just talking offline about some of the proceedings and the events that happened in Melbourne, and I thought it'd be a good discussion to get out into the greater uptime audience. Rosemary, first off, welcome back, and can you give us just a couple of just top level what was going on in Melbourne australia at this wind energy conference? Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, it was actually really focused on offshore wind this time. We I would say two thirds, three quarters, maybe more of the sessions were like explicitly about offshore wind, it seemed, and when it wasn't explicitly about it, then people were trying to shoehorn it in, which. On the one hand, it makes sense because that's the, next big exciting thing coming. But on the other hand, we have literally zero offshore wind currently, and we have many things that could be improved with our current onshore wind rollout. I did think that there, it was a bit unbalanced in that way. This conference, it was amazing in terms of everybody shows up to it. I, I think I was just back to back meetings the entire time really targeted at all the people that I, Wanted to talk to for, the various projects that I've got going on. So in that sense, it was incredibly successful and and had a great time. But yeah, when I did find the time to step into some of the presentations, which is what you pay for after all, it's 1, 500 for two days. And yeah, the sessions that I went to, they're just getting. Worse and worse. It feels less and less like anybody cares what the experience is like for the attendees, what they might be hoping to get out of it. And it's just purely about extracting money from everybody, extract money from the exhibitors, extract money from the sponsors, extract money from the keynote speakers. People don't realize that the keynote speakers are all, they're all paying to stand up there and speak to you like, like a lot. Yeah, pretty significant amount. And some of them are good, but you don't know ahead of time. And for the most part, people pay their 10 grand or whatever it is and stand up there and give you a sales pitch. And that's not valuable to the majority of the audience. Yeah, another complaint just on the panel discussions. The panels are just way too big. You have a panel with 10 different people on it you spend half of the session just introducing everybody and then they've got to give their little pitch about their company because they've got to get something out of it. And then, yeah, there's not, there's too many people to have an actual discussion, usually not many, or maybe not any questions from the audience, certainly not addressed in a meaningful way. And you have sessions like a session on, it sounds like it should be interesting session on supply chai...