The 30th Annual AMC Engineering Conference, which is celebrating 30 Years of Innovation, is fast approaching. The event will be hosted in Waterloo, Iowa at the Five Sullivan Brothers Convention Center May 5th through 7th. Many will think back and remember this conference as the Ag Machinery Conference but for the second year now, the committee and vendors are staying committed to expanding the scope to include the entire off-highway industry. A tremendous amount of overlap exists between the technologies used in each of these industries, as well as the many suppliers that support them. If we truly want to advance technology, we need to learn from each other. The AMC Engineering Conference provides that opportunity.
We have a fantastic conference lined up this year. Continuing education sessions are slated to occur on Tuesday, with two sessions in the morning and three sessions in the afternoon. These sessions line up the most current technologies to allow attendees to get credits, while learning about the latest and greatest. DISTek’s William Griffin is teaming up with Mathworks for one of the morning sessions. This Model Based Software Development seminar will focus on the application of model-based techniques to the design of embedded control systems, which prove to be a very effective and well accepted way to improve product quality, while reducing design time and cost. Other continuing ed topics include Spring Materials, Cellular Technology, Cloud Services, and two great workshops, an AGILE Team Workshop and a Mobile Application Development Workshop.
The fun gets started on Tuesday night with the official conference kick-off opening ceremonies event. A tour of the new John Deere Museum will be followed by a gathering at the TechWorks building. This event provides a great opportunity for vendors and attendees to network, while enjoying appetizers, dinner, and drinks. Jillian Beaty, award winning Agricultural Educational instructor from the Oregon school district in Oregon, Wisconsin will be the featured keynote speaker for the evening.
We have many great technical presentations lined up this year occurring throughout the day on Wednesday and Thursday. DISTek Software Engineer Beth Hallett will be on hand Wednesday to present a 9am session in the Data Networks track on ISOBUS titled, “ISO 11783 Part 10 – A Prescription for Accuracy.” Other topics range from big data and emission controls to the ever popular discussion on drones and machine safety. Closing the conference on Thursday is a grand finale attendees will certainly not want to miss. Students from area junior high and high schools will be demonstrating their building, programming, and teamwork skills with their FIRST Robotics demonstrations.
The speakers for the conference play an integral role in the AMC Engineering Conference experience. At breakfast local users that actually utilize the technology attendees put so much into developing will be speaking. Jeff Reints, from Shell Rock IA, and Nick Hermanson, from Story City, IA, are both excited to share their stories from the farm. At lunch time, we are fortunate to have two great keynote luncheon speakers. On Wednesday attendees will hear from Charlie O’Brien, Senior Vice President and Head of Ag Services at AEM and Thursday Award Winning Journalist and Best Selling Author, Russ Banham will be joining us.
In between sessions and speakers, attendees will be invited to visit the exhibit floor in the Five Sullivan Brothers Convention Center, which will be filled with 57 individual industry suppliers, including DISTek, displaying their latest products and technologies for the off-highway industry. In addition, the opportunity will be available to view displays of engines, antique equipment, and some of the latest technology available in production. An evening social, sponsored by OEM Off-Highway, on Wednesday provides an additional forum for attendees to network with exhibitors.
Each year the committee works to keep content fresh to bring the highest value to everyone including the vendors, guest speakers, continuing education trainers, and of course our loyal attendees. One of the changes we made this year was the addition of QR codes on all badges. With a simple scan information will be exchanged and available for download. Tied to this, we are offering a fun giveaway contest for our attendees for $1500 worth of 3D printing services compliments of Advanced Technology Systems.
If you have not registered yet for this year’s exciting conference, registration is still open online at amc-online.org. Make plans to attend today and we will see you in Waterloo, Iowa on May 5th through 7th, 2015!
