It’s All About the Volunteers!

BY MIKE HOWE tawwa executive director

Even after 27 years of Texas Water™ Conferences, I still react like a kid at the circus when I see everything come together as the exhibit hall is "built" and all the months of planning come together into a great conference.

I have told this story before, but it helps put the size of the conference into perspective.

My 97-year-old father-in-law once asked what I did for a living. Along with everything else that is part of leading an association of over 4,400 members, I tried to explain the true magnitude of the Texas Water™ Conference. He is a CPA, so he truly gets numbers. He also understands conferences and training, but for some reason something didn’t connect in my explanation. Finally, Donna spoke up and told her dad, "Think of it as a week-long wedding for over 5,000 people." For some reason that made sense. Maybe because it was coming from her without all the elaborate details. In any event, it worked.

If you were at Texas Water™ 2023, then you saw another record-breaking number of attendees, an amazingly sophisticated level of technical presentations and poster sessions and a record number of exhibitor booths. This was the largest Texas Water Conference— ever.

In the weeks prior to the conference, we use the Full Registration count as our benchmark that drives many of our planning decisions. Such things as seating in the technical sessions, arrangements for the events, including how many lunches to order, and even how much coffee to have on hand throughout the conference.

Prior to the conference, I reported that we were at least 12% above our record numbers from San Antonio in 2022. As we got closer to the conference, we saw the 12% number increase and, because we always have onsite registrations, we started to plan for even higher numbers. But none of us expected an increase of nearly 17% increase in Full Registrations. And the oneday registrations were up over 40%. Now that the final numbers of everyone who was badged have been tallied, including exhibitors, volunteers, presenters, and all attendees in the building, the total was a remarkable 6,761 in attendance. That is nearly a 20% increase over 2022. If you thought there was a huge crowd at the conference, you were right. As AWWA President Joe Jacangelo said, “This feels like ACE!”

For those who attended, they saw the product of months of planning by a committed group of volunteers who took on the tasks and committed to the success of the conference as only water

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