railroads stepped up to the plate and really supported us. We had good participation from all the railroads — large and small. And the exhibitors were very happy. That’s what it’s all about.” Based on the success of Railway Interchange 2011, Emely
guesses that the joint event will be held every other year. India- napolis has already been chosen for 2013, and Emely is begin- ning to look for a destination for 2015. At press time, AREMA also was preparing for a post-con
meeting. “We asked the other three organizations to do their own post-cons, and we are [all] getting together in January to review everything,” he said. “We’ll go over relevant issues that came up that need to be resolved for 2013. We picked up things in the regis- tration process, for example, that would be done differently in 2013. We would streamline the rate matrix and ask the other organizations to simplify their pricing structure to make it less compli- cated and easier to administer as part of a combined event.” Drudy echoed the need to fine-tune
Railway Interchange’s registration pro- cess, and also would like to see some improvements in the way housing is handled. “When RSSI’s hotels were full, some of our people ended up at an outlying location instead of going into one of the other organizations’ hotels because [the other organizations] were afraid of their hotels filling up, too,” Drudy said. “There was no shuttle ser- vice available from the outlying hotels, so people either had to rent a car or take a cab back and forth. That’s a les- son learned.” Another “issue to overcome,” ac-
cording to Drudy, is the fact that RSSI has a policy prohibiting its exhibitors from hosting private events. “If a com- pany is exhibiting with us, they can’t have private dinners or parties for their customers. But they can if they exhib- it with REMSA or RSI,” Drudy said. “Some companies exhibit with all three organizations, which puts them in a bad spot because they can invite some of their customers to private events but not all of them. We need to work that out.” (RSSI “got around” that challenge this year by hosting a hospitality event in the grand ballroom of the Minneap- olis Marriott City Center, which was its headquarters hotel.) From Soule’s perspective, the combi-
nation of technical conferences and ex- hibits meant that some attendees found themselves short on time. “One of the post-event comments I heard was that
the event should have been a little longer, because some peo- ple who attended the technical conferences didn’t have enough time to spend on the show floor,” Soule said. “Other than that, there was nothing huge. Just little glitches, which is to be ex- pected.” Emely said: “All things considered, what might have been a
challenge for all of us — financially and otherwise — turned out to be very successful. We’re looking forward to 2013, which I think will be smoother overall.” n
Carol Bialkowski is a New Jersey–based writer and editor.