Making friends

So. The day draws to a close. And what a great day it has been! Tremendous hard work has seen the empty hall transformed into an exhibition which will begin tomorrow. While many Texans from the Freeman company were dragging around heavy materials, floor coverings, cables and the like, the exhibitors were setting up their stands and the SSW (Stainless Steel World) team were putting the finishing touches to their registration desk.

As I wrote yesterday we spent the Sunday unpacking magazines and re-packing them into conference bags, and today we packed them all up again to transfer them to the hall – oh yes, we know how to keep busy – where we welcomed our first guests.

To be honest I don’t really have any clients to say hello to. You see, I work as a freelance editor for SSW and especially for the Dutch-language publications. Sometimes I travel to Houston and I occasionally visit our fairs in Maastricht and Dusseldorf. So I do have some vague acquaintances and I recognise some familiar faces. But nevertheless it is a real treat to see how warmly SSW staff and their clients great each other. Many enjoy long-standing business relations, so there were happy, smiling faces all around – including mine, I should add.

As I said, many of the SSW staff and their business friends have known each other for a long time. However, that does not mean that they are always popping in an out for coffee. After all, this is an international business so face-to-face meetings are sadly all too infrequent. Instead, BlackBerries and e-mails are the order of the day to maintain contact. So it’s always nice to meet your friends in a corner of the world, to shake hands, perhaps to give a respectful bow, or – what the heck – to exchange “big hugs”! And what better place for that than Houston, the “the place to be if you produce, use or supply stainless steel”.

Meeting friends at the SSW America show. SSW Editor-in-Chief John Butterfield is
second left.

Soon the conference delegates will meet again to talk about complicated metallurgical topics. Nuclear power is one of the challenging applications up for discussion. I learned that this evening during a reception where people converged for a welcome drink after a hard day’s work. I got talking to a fellow Dutchman, Ronald Dekker. He works at the Nuclear Research & Consultancy Group in the Netherlands and is planning to deliver a lecture to address some of the ambiguities and misconceptions about the use of this form of energy. During our pleasant conversation we were joined by a second gentleman. Naturally we asked him what his line of business was and he replied that he is a materials engineer working on the machines used in paper mills. But then he told us that, back in the 1980s, he had actually worked in a nuclear power plant! Well, it really is a small world. Full of people with shared experiences, full of friends. And now I can really say that I, too, have some friends in the stainless steel sector. Who knows what tomorrow will bring me and my colleagues … hopefully many more friends!

So here we are, on Sunday, October 3 in the heart of Woodlands, Waterway Marriott. To be exact, in the main hall of the hotel where a major event will take place: the Stainless Steel World Expo 2010. We have been at this spot in Houston, Texas, for just over a day and are ready to go. Well, we are, but the same can’t be said yet for the hall…

But then what can you expect? We only arrived here twenty- four short hours ago. From Kentucky, Toronto, Amsterdam and Shanghai, the Stainless Steel World team trickled into the Marriott. Heartfelt greetings were exchanged, and that was followed by a memorable and hilarious meal. Thanks, it must be said, to a very enthusiastic Bob from “The Cheesecake Factory”, our fifty-year-old ‘waiter for the night’. The good man did not realize that he was serving a group of people who had had little sleep and whose consuming desire was to order a humble hamburger that tastes much, much better than it does at home… With Bob as a catalyst the jokes were flying thick and fast and the burgers were well worth waiting for. Having satisfied our stomachs we soon turned in for a good night’s rest in our temporary home. Because that’s exactly how the Marriott was already starting to feel, even after just a few short hours. What a great start for the coming days.

The SSW team hard at work making up conference bags. Our undercover blogger, Marlous Schoemaker, is on the left.

That everyone was quickly in top gear in the south of the U.S. of A was quite clear this morning. Like a well-oiled machine we unpacked boxes full of show catalogues, newspapers, forms and badges and then re-packed them all into the white conference bags. From tomorrow onwards these bags will be snapped up like hot cakes by the sponsors, delegates, exhibitors and visitors, all looking for valuable information. Because that is obviously what the show is all about: providing information.

Anyway, tomorrow is tomorrow. Right now we are looking with some trepidation at an enormous hall. It is a cavernous space, quite empty save for a discarded pile of chairs and some haphazard dining tables. Exactly twenty-four hours ago this was the setting for a banquet to honour the “Heroes of Houston”. In a day’s time this hall will welcome the heroes from the stainless steel sector. That means there’s a lot of work still to be done to set up the 65 stands. But one by one all the jobs will be ticked off. Both we and the hall will be spick and span, ready to welcome all our guests.