Las Vegas Is Home To Huge Conventions on Renewable Energy – And Essentially Everything Else

Sorry if this comes across as out-of-touch, but I’ve never had any particular love affair with Las Vegas.  When I was consulting to IBM and one of  its joint ventures in the late 1990s, my team and I spent three days in Vegas – quarterly.  Yes, that’s 12 out of every 365 days for each of several years—in a place that has never impressed me.

I’m turned off by idiots flying in from all over the country to lose money they should be saving for the children’s education.  I’m not a huge fan of prostitution—or garish architecture, built to be torn down 20 years after it’s constructed, when some new casino design fad calls for something bigger and gaudier to be built on those acres on The Strip whose value—even unimproved—is measured in hundreds of millions of dollars.

Having said this, I should admit that I’ve had some fun there, and, more to the point, that Las Vegas, because of its capacity to provide adult entertainment, actually is a terrific place for a business convention.  Renewable energy fans may be aware that the AWEA show (American Wind Energy Association) is coming up next week, held at Mandalay Bay.

When this show got started a couple of decades ago, it could have been held in my living room; now, it occupies several million square feet.  I’m looking forward to checking out the great new ideas that have come along in the industry in the last 12 months.

I’m also looking forward to meeting an important new business contact – who will be in Las Vegas for another convention entirely, focusing on eco-friendly home improvement products.  It’s likely that, if I had other contacts, perhaps in golf equipment, home schooling curricula, or mountain climbing paraphernalia, that I could run into them there as well.

In the world of conventions, it happens in Las Vegas.