Conference and Trade Show

Just returned from the Canadian Golf Course Superintendent (CGSA)/Western Canadian Turfgrass Association (WCTA) Annual Conference and Trade-show.   After three days of education, networking, and trade show participation it is  back to work today.   Snow removal and grooming will be the first thing on the agenda as there has been another twenty cm of snow over the past 24 hours.

While traveling home, I reflected on some of the things I learned, some of the products that may be beneficial to Greywolf, and some of the lessons I learned by networking with my colleagues.

There were numerous educational opportunities over the past three days.  On several occasions I found I wanted to attend more than one session.   The CGSA and WCTA did an excellent job of providing a wide variety of educational opportunities and topics.
Some of the sessions I was able to attend included Turf Disease Identification, Fall Applied N in Cool Climates, and the Effects of Irrigation Water Quality on Turfgrass.  The speakers were from all over the Canada and the United States including universities such as Rutgers, Cornell, Wisconsin, and Guelph.

Three seminars were outstanding.  Frank Rossi’s of Cornell University, session about fertility will cause me to look at the “conventional” thinking about potassium fertilization and use in winterization.  I will be doing a little more research on his ideas of reducing potassium amounts through the season and during winterization.   Two other seminars stood out for me.  They were not what I would consider “mainstream” turfgrass topics.  Weather 101: Fundamentals for Turf Managers highlighted many weather trends and meteorological measurements I did not know about or understand.  Besides our greens, the topic that Superintendents discussed the most is the weather (i.e. the start of this post!).

Weather 101 Session

The last session of the conference, Social Media and the Turf Professional – The Basics Plus by John Kaminski of Penn State University discussed blogs, Facebook, Twitter and many of the other social media trends and how they relate to Superintendent.   I hope to incorporate many of his ideas as I move forward with the social media trend.  I also think you will see a few new blogs from my fellow golf course Superintendents starting up soon as we look for ways to improve communicatation with our members and guests.

I want to thank the ownership and Directors at Panorama who supported our participation at the conference.  I am confident the knowledge and ideas we bring back to the Greywolf will benefit our golf course.