Here’s Why Wastewater Industry Professionals Will Be Looking Up in 2023

Here’s how professional conferences help keep wastewater industry professionals “looking up”.

2022 was a great year for professional conferences in the wastewater industry. The teams at SediVision® and U.S. Submergent Technologies were privileged to be part of or in attendance at a number of water and wastewater conferences, and we have expanded plans for participation in additional professional events in 2023.

Wastewater industry conferences, including WEFTEC, GRWA, FRWA, NAWC, FWRC, and other exceptional events, require extensive planning and countless hours of work by their organizers. Yet to water and wastewater professionals, they are worth every moment of planning, preparation, and leadership that successful events demand.

Industry conferences unite us. When water industry professionals attend and support their industry events, they expand their connections, build bonds, discover new technologies and effective services, and learn resource-saving strategies. Wastewater industry events provide everyone in attendance a reason to “look up”.

Why Wastewater Industry Conferences Matter

Many professionals find they spend a lot of time literally looking down. They are looking down at work on their desk, down at their smartphones and other devices, or down at the equipment or dashboards they operate. Physically, this pose and the problems it creates have become so much a part of everyone’s daily routine that it has given rise to the term “tech neck”.

According to K. Daniel Riew, M.D., director of cervical spine surgery and co-director of spine surgery in the department of orthopedic surgery at Och Spine at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, symptoms of tech-neck manifest as “headaches, neck spasms, and creaky shoulder joints.”

But not only are we physically looking down, much of the time, many of us are also mentally “looking down.” Tunnel-visioned on our own tasks and responsibilities, we can quickly grow stagnant and weary dealing with all that piles up on our plate.

When we stop looking up mentally, we run the risk that we will also stop growing, stop engaging with others outside our daily circle, and stop working as a vital and united profession.

The many excellent educational and networking events scheduled within the water and wastewater industry create valued opportunities for all of us to look up both physically and mentally. The SediVision and U.S. Submergent Technologies teams hope we’ll see you at many of these professional conferences in 2023. And since we’ll all be looking up, let’s make sure we get the opportunity to connect face-to-face.

2023 is Looking Up!

We hope you enjoy these great “looking up” photos from one of the many outstanding water and wastewater industry professional events this past year, the 2022 WEFTEC Operations Challenge.