SPE Conference at NPE2009 Will Be ‘a Powerful Magnet for Attracting New Visitors to the Show’

As part of a broad-based program to add new facets to the NPE experience for attendees, SPI has reached an agreement with the Society of Plastics Engineers (SPE) by which SPE will present a massive technical conference at NPE2009, with hundreds of peer-reviewed, never before published papers. The agreement enables SPI to provide NPE visitors with the largest technical program ever offered as an integral part of an international plastics show.

“The SPE technical conference is good news for our exhibitors, because a conference of this stature will act as a powerful magnet to attract new visitors to NPE,” says SPI president and CEO Bill Carteaux. “It will also increase the return on investment anticipated by those members of our traditional attendee population who may be deliberating whether or not to visit in 2009.”

SPE’s annual ANTEC™ is the world’s largest plastics technical conference and the premiere source of plastics education, notes Susan Oderwald, SPE executive director. “We will develop an NPE2009 conference that, like ANTEC, consists solely of original, peer-reviewed presentations ranging over a broad spectrum of technical interests,” says Oderwald. “There will be hundreds of papers, reflecting the diversity of our SPE membership and the tens of thousands of visitors at NPE2009.”

The SPE technical conference will take place in the new McCormick West building, which includes extensive, state-of-the-art meeting facilities. The building has 250,000 sq.ft. (23,200 sq.m) of meeting space divided among 61 rooms, plus 470,000 sq. ft. (43,700 sq.m) of gross exhibition space.

“Besides accommodating many NPE2009 exhibitors, McCormick West will serve as a kind of technology center for the show by providing the venue for the SPE conference and nearly all of the other educational programs being planned, plus special technology programs on the exhibit floor, such as a global design competition and pavilions dedicated to emerging technologies,” says Carteaux.