The Piedmont Chapter hosted the 83rd AFS Southeastern Regional Conference this year in Isle of Palms, SC on March 2-4, 2016. It was a great event with a great turnout. First and foremost we would like to thank all of our generous sponsors for making this event possible. And I would personally like to thank everyone on the planning committee for making the event such a success. The opening reception at the pool side deck was very enjoyable with great food and the weather was very nice, considering the high winds everyone fought during the golf outing early in the day.
The technical sessions kicked off in the morning at 8am with a great introductory talk by Peter Reich. Lots of great speakers gave informative, interesting, and entertaining talks about a variety of topics from global market trends, to investing back into your company, to the future of AFS. After lunch Doug Kurkul, the incoming AFS CEO, started things off by giving us some background on himself an some of the things he sees for the future of AFS as he takes the reins from Jerry Call. The rest of the afternoon was filled with some great talks and a panel by Tom Prucha and Nick Fox on the function and importance of AFS Technical Committees. We would like to especially thank all of our speakers that took time out of their busy schedules to come join us. Thank you Peter Reich, Bruce Dienst, Micheal Whitfield, Pete Satre, Glenn Mosack, Doug Kurkul, Dough Trinowski, Tom Prucha, and Nick Fox.
The night wound down with a great poolside reception where we announced the winners of all of the raffle drawings. This year we were very excited to raffle away some great prizes including a Goldens' Cast Iron Cooker, some cookware from Lodge Foundry, a Bronze Sword from the students and Virginia Tech, and some molten aluminum Fire Ant Hill Art. Thank you all for your kind donations. Following the reception, bus rides were available to downtown Charleston for more food, drinks, and entertainment.
On Friday morning, Nucor Steel hosted a group of attendees for a private tour of the melt department of their steel mill in Berkeley SC. Overall, another successful regional event is in the books. Looking forward to next year when the Tennessee Chapter hosts this great event.