Our company recently held Turf Equipment University, our customer training event. This year we had the event in partnership with the University of Maryland, in the first week of January, & Penn State-Berks County, in the second week of January. The PA event was held at The Ace Conference center in Lafayette Hill. TEU's have multiple tracks for Superintendents/Sports Fields & Grounds Managers/Technicians/Irrigation Contractors &Technicians.
I was fortunate enough to be the track leader for the Superintendent classes for the last two TEU's we have held in conjunction with Penn State Berks Campus & Dr. Mike Fidanza. Dr. Mike is one of the true good guys in the turf business. Always with a smile and a kind word. He also spoke at a field day I organized at the Philadelphia Union's stadium, this past year summer. Dr. Mike kicked us off with a year in review to start. He had some great pictures of his trip to China, this past summer, with some other turf professors.
After Dr. Mike, Bill Brown, CGCS from Hartefeld National GC gave his turf & social media talk. Bill is speaking at the Golf Industry Show this year. If you want to hear someone who is really at the cutting edge in the turf industry in the use of social media, I would urge you to catch Bill's talk.
Following Bill was John Gosselin, Superintendent at Aronimink GC & host of the AT&T event for the PGA the past 2 years, and Mike Giuffre, Director of Golf, Grounds & Maintenance at Congressional CC, host of the 2011 US Open. I had to use a cheat sheet for the introduction because of the unreal list of professional tournaments they had hosted between the two of them (OVER 20!). John focused on the pre tournament experiences he had with great behind the scene information and then discussed the week of the tournament. Mike spoke about the US Open and some lead up but focused on what happens afterwards. He had some truly amazing things to deal with and some great photos of things returning to normal.
Next on the agenda was Jim Nedin, to discuss the upcoming Tier IV government regulations & the truth about clip rates. Jim is currently a consultant for our company. Jim is without a doubt one of the smartest guys I know. I always say when I introduce him, that there are guys who are turf experts and then there are guys who equipment experts but he is the only one I know who knows both to the incredible amounts he does! He was a former Superintendent/Service Manager for a Toro Distributor/Worked for Toro in their Service Division and is now back consulting.
After lunch was Tim Moraghan, Principle of Aspire Consulting. Tim was the Championship Agronomist for the USGA for over 20 years. His topic was the 20-50 Rule. The sad truth that if you are at a club for 20 years and are in your 50's, you should be doing somethings to protect yourself. Tim was honest in what he is seeing out there. This was still being talked about that night at the dinner.
Dann Harris, of DHC Consulting was the final speaker of the day. Dann spoke on the topic of manage and motivating employees. His discussions are always highly interactive. Dann also was our last speaker on the second day of our event. That topic was hiring the right people.
In addition to Dann, on the second day, we had Paul Danielson from the Toro Company to speak about acquisition strategies. Paul is a great resource for financing information.
We also had Anne Holderried of Ameriprise Financial to speak about retirement planning.
In the end some we had a chance to get many turf industry leaders on one all-Star line up card.
I think I know what our customers opinion was of TEU but I know for me, I was really excited about how much information was provided by our speakers. They did an incredible job in making our Turf Equipment University special and for that I wanted to say THANK YOU!
WJC
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