San Diego in the rearview mirror

Now that we’ve put a week between us and the big, big show in San Diego, I thought it would be good to take a quick look back both at what we saw during the event and what I think now that we can put some perspective on it.

 

Thumbs up for the sparkling reviews of the education sessions that focused on leadership, people management, communications and other critical non-agronomic skills. For years, the association would offer these classes, but attendance would be thin compared to the usual turf management topics. I think this change is the product of being able to get strong technical information back home and a growing recognition that “soft” skills are often vastly more important than grass growing in today’s market.  

 

Thumbs up to a little dose of star power from the always affable Ben Crenshaw. I chatted with him for a few minutes before he and Bill Coore accepted the Don Rossi award from the GCBAA. He’s simply a nice person who happens to have a unique vision for how golf courses should be routed and how they should “feel” when you’re playing them. Oh, and he won a couple of green jackets. Otherwise, totally humble guy who was kind enough to say a few nice things about our little magazine. 

 

Thumbs up to the convention center itself, which is easy to get around and well-staffed with nice folks. It would be great if there were more food choices available in the building, but they obviously want conventioneers to spend bigger bucks and support local merchants in the Gaslamp. 

 

All that said, a big, big thumbs down to the city of San Diego — one of America’s wealthiest communities — for allowing the shameful numbers of street people, homeless men, and women and addicts to continue to explode. It’s way worse than three years ago. It’s way worse than any other big city in America. It’s unconscionable and it’s a disgrace. 

 

Honestly, I’d never come back here again if it was up to me. I feel like having the GIS here and investing millions of dollars in this city condones this awful situation. Remember that show organizers dropped New Orleans from the rotation, supposedly because it was dirty and dangerous. I’ve been to NOLA a dozen times and I’ve never anywhere near this many people who are obviously schizophrenic or addicts who are literally overdosing on the street. In just 15 minutes walking back to my hotel, I saw two different ambulance crews administering Narcan to revive people who had OD’ed right along 5th Avenue, the main entertainment strip in the Gaslamp. 

 

 

Many times in the past I’d use this space to talk about whether the big, big show was busy or slow. I’d examine the causes and take our host association to task. I’d shake my fist (metaphorically) and call for change!

 

But, frankly, I don’t care about crap like that anymore. The show is what it is. It’s not a selling show where suppliers are trying to book business (though a few do). It’s a networking show. In a relationship-driven market, time spent bonding with customers is valuable. Valuable enough to spend a fortune to exhibit here? Each exhibitor has to judge for themselves. I know it’s valuable to me and our business to be here, and we usually close a significant amount of advertising business so it’s all good by me. 

 

It was interesting to learn that the NGCOA is dropping out of the GIS partnership. I’m not shocked they’re doing it. I’m sure the owners want their own event and autonomy back just like CMAA a few years ago. But what was really interesting was that nobody cared. I hadn’t heard anything about and when I asked a few supplier friends about it they just sort of shrugged. Meh. 

 

I’m frankly bullish about the quality of this event, but I’m absolutely certain it will continue to shrink (with or without NGCOA). Does anyone believe that thousands more superintendents will flock back to the show and exhibit sales will grow again like they did in the 1990s? Uh, I sure don’t. 

 

But I do think that a smaller, higher quality event would be fine for most of us who serve this industry commercially.  

 

It’s a well-managed event and a target-rich environment for a professional schmoozer like me. It’s so rewarding to be here and I learn so much. And my cup runneth over with the joy of seeing good friends ... and taking selfies with them.

 

So, it really was an excellent show. One of the things I didn’t cover was the personal and institution efforts going on to try to highlight the role of women in the profession and how we can create more opportunities for female turf professionals.

 

A few interesting things:

 

• Many of the female role models the association is highlighting are Canadian. I will stick with my assertion I made a month ago after visiting the Ontario GSA show that the culture up north is more favorable for female turfheads. In the U.S., we still struggle with this concept.

• The official number I saw from GCSAA was that 1.5 percent of the association’s 18,000 members are female. That’s about 250 total. If you take out affiliate members (salespeople, academics, etc.), the actual number of women members who work on golf courses everyday is 55. Honestly, that’s fewer than 25 years ago when I was on staff at GCSAA. Not good.

• That said, it’s great that we’re finally starting to make an effort as an industry to be inclusive. But it has to be more than just a PR thing. 

But, we still have a long way to go. 

 

The last day of the show, which includes the “closing session” activities (which are a mostly futile effort to keep a few superintendents on the show floor until the bitter end and reduce complaints from exhibitors). This year’s closing session spotlighted by Sinbad (yes, that Sinbad), a hypnotist (yes, a frickin’ hypnotist), some other fun stuff and presentations to the winning turf bowl teams. 

 

In an effort to make the turf bowl award presentation all collegiately spirited and such, show organizers hired some cheerleaders/dancers to waive their pom-poms. Some felt that the cheerleaders/dancers were fun and appropriate. Others – including several of the female turf professionals who had been highlighted during the week’s inclusiveness programs – did not.

Our friend Leah Brilman was one of those who did not think the cheerleaders were appropriate in the context of an industry event that was ostensibly focused on equality. She tweeted this:

Many of us agreed, others did not. That’s the nature of social media.

 

But what troubled me and is the reason I put a big fat asterisk on the “Greatest Show Ever” review was that it took GCSAA nearly two days to respond to Leah’s tweet. Here’s my problem: Leah Brilman is a one of the most influential and highly regarded turfgrass scientists in the world. She’s spent her entire adult life working in our industry to improve turfgrasses. In fact, she received the GCSAA’s Distinguished Service Award for all of her contributions just last year. If anyone has a right to an opinion about this, it’s Leah Brilman.

 

When she sent that tweet, there were an unfortunate number of people from the edges of the turf community (let’s be polite and just call them “a-holes”) who told her to get over it and not be so easily offended. This is a women who has endured endless crap in our market for four decades and yet the aforementioned a-holes are calling her a snowflake.

 

Yet GCSAA did not respond to her -- a DSA winner. And when they finally did it was the classic non-apology apology:

Here’s what they should have said:

 

“Leah, you’re right. We should have realized that having female dancers in our official event is contrary to the message we were trying to send about inclusion and equality the rest of the week. Let’s use this mistake to spur a discussion about how we can do better in future.”

 

But they didn’t say that. Which is why we still have a long way to go. And why I put an asterisk on an otherwise terrific show.

 

See you in Orlando kids ...