Final Thoughts

One photo from the Monday evening reception says it all, yours truly needs to lose some weight…(or, make sure no one takes any side shot photos of me…). So, one of the early goals for next year’s conference is to take the same angle photo to see if I look any better.

One interesting poll we took during the conference was regarding who the audience was supporting for president. The blind results with 148 respondents was: Who cares 16%, Other 14%, Hillary Clinton 22% and Donald Trump 48%.

Here are some numbers for you to review regarding this year’s conference. We ended up with 430 registrations. We had 4-5 cancellations within the last 48 hours where they were unable to have someone take their place. So, we probably had 425 people actually show for the conference.

A warm thank you to all 430 of you that registered, to our speakers and especially to my staff: Ray Culley, Brett Linton, Diana Packard, Sandy Williams, Mario Briccetti, Steve Painter, Peter Wright, Ryan Packard and John Eckstein.

I also want to thank Timna Tanners and Joe Innace for agreeing to help host various panels. They did a great job and their help was greatly appreciated.

On Monday we had a tremendous gathering at the Marriott Gateway Hotel for an informal networking opportunity. I know the bar tenders were very happy between the special coupons we were using compliments of Tennessee Steel Haulers and the fact that steel people like to hang around the lounge area to talk and, well have a drink or two. I am quite sure the bar stayed open much later than normal.

The mood of the attendees was more upbeat than one year ago. Lee McMillan, Analyst with Clarksons Platou Securities wrote in a note to his clients, “We had the pleasure of attending Steel Market Update’s Steel Summit 2016 conference in Atlanta last week, and we provide a few takeaways below. The conference is a favorite of ours, particularly due to the high proportion of purchasing managers and steel salesmen, and the market knowledge to be gained from their direct involvement in the daily purchase and sale of steel products. Sentiment was markedly more diverse this year than last (when just about everyone was roundly bearish), but generally people expected prices to fall somewhat from here…”

We got some great suggestions on how we can take a conference that is already very good and make it better. We are already working on those suggestions and you can mark your calendars for August 28-30, 2017 in Atlanta.

Regarding 2017 Steel Summit sponsorships: We have an interesting dilemma as we have a number of companies who want to be sponsors or exhibitors at next year’s event. Those who sponsored this year will get first crack and then we will work from the list based on those who asked first. If your company has an interest please let me know and we will add you to the list.

I want to take a moment to welcome our newest member companies – both Executive and Premium – as well as our new free trials. We want you to be aware that we try to stay as accessible as possible to our members as well as those on a trial. You can reach us at info@SteelMarketUpdate.com or by phone at 800-432-3475. We enjoy questions, comments and suggestions as we are always interested in improving our products and our newsletter articles.

As always your business is truly appreciated by all of us at Steel Market Update.

John Packard, Publisher