This was my first time at the World of Concrete, which featured over 48,000 concreters, masons, and paving pros who gathered to innovate, learn, and network. The global concrete and masonry industry was on full display.
The event’s theme was clear: celebrate the latest products, technologies, and information to the rest of the world. The conference presentations that caught my eye were Concrete Maturity: Determining Field Compressive Strength of Concrete. and Cold Weather: Managing Concrete in Winter Conditions.” Being at COMMAND Center, those are the topics that hit home in a good way!
As I walked through the halls, I was impressed by the scale and the energy. Traffic at the booth ebbed and flowed throughout the show, and we saw hundreds of booth visitors – a testament to the need for reliable, affordable, and easy-to-use solutions and technologies. We didn’t have the big budgets of larger booths, but we still received the same attention. We were happy, though – the swag went quick, from key chains to carpenter pencils. And we got to meet with happy customers who couldn’t help but give us praise.
The crowd was also diverse – engineers, QA people, people in the concrete industry, masonry experts, and many more who came by to learn about our new Sensor Reader Module (SRM) and our latest COMMAND Center for Concrete 4 Web! I even ran into a stone company that sent me a pizza stone to test in my Ooni pizza oven. How cool is that?! It was an excellent bonus that I didn’t personally expect.
Looking back, the World of Concrete is more than just an industry show: it is a place to learn about the products, teach people about our easiest-to-use, most affordable method for monitoring concrete data, and bring people together to form relationships. The experience has also taught us new approaches to continue to enhance our product that will help us remain competitive in the future.
The whole experience inside World of Concrete was enjoyable because we were competing with the same people who had budgets of thousands of dollars. It was a learning curve. When you don’t have that budget, you must make every dollar count, right? It’s about being more creative and innovative and delivering a quality product and experience for the person you are engaging with – someone who could grow to be one of your users!
To sum up, attending World of Concrete 2024 was a thrilling experience for me, more exciting and impactful than I had anticipated – with a platform scale, increasing diversity, and the enthusiasm of the participants marking a new era of celebration of the whole concrete industry beyond solely the materials it is known for. So, we’re already planning on what we can bring to World of Concrete 2025 and carry those lessons from this year to help us get even better.
If you have any questions about COMMAND Center and would like to learn more, reach out to our team to schedule a free consultation by clicking here!
