I had the opportunity to attend the 2009 ASHRAE Winter Conference which was held in Chicago at the end of January. Attending the conference made me realize exactly how big the society really is. There are a total of 172 chapters within 14 regions worldwide. I am a member of the New York chapter and am the President of ASHRAE student club at City College of New York. I attended the conference with Emmanuel Hirakis from TCI College.

On Sunday January 25th we both met with students from all over the world at the Student Breakfast in the Palmer House Hilton Hotel. The President of ASHRAE Mr. William A. Harrison made the official introduction to the convention and emphasized embracing and delivering ASHRAE sustainability promises. The president, among others, spoke about the benefits of joining ASHRAE and the advantages of starting a HVAC career in the sales field. The 2008 Student Design Competition winners were also awarded during the morning session. The following colleges took first place awards:

System Design Category: 1st Place: ChulalongkornUniversity

System Selection Category: 1st Place: Pennsylvania State University

Architectural Design Category: 1st Place: University of Kansas

Following the introductions and awards, we had a two hour interactive session which was facilitated by Mr. Stephen Gray. Mr. Gray is the Director of Parent and Student Services at East Carolina University and has been working with college students most of his life. He gave us an opportunity mingle and introduce ourselves to hundreds of students attending the conference ? this was done in the form of fun tasks carried out by teams of 15 students. This experience enabled us to network with other students from the US and various parts of the world. Within two hours of his presentation Mr. Gray had vividly strengthened our team building and networking skills.

The morning session ended with a Q&A session with a panel of young engineers with few years of experience in the industry. Students asked what motivated them to get involved in ASHRAE ? engineers answered that the biggest incentives were networking and the opportunities to learn from more experienced members. Another question was about LEED standards and how they are being implemented in the companies that they work for. Bo Troumasi (Brandt Engineering Dallas, TX) agreed that "?LEED is hard to enforce, but it is getting stronger and stronger. Sustainability is where we are headed in the future and LEED is the way of quantifying it?". Another question from the audience was about the biggest surprise after joining the industry. Dunstan Macauley (PE Encon Group Inc. Kensington MD) honestly admitted that he didn't know a lot about HVAC but learned along the way. He said "?College prepares you how to work systematically to find the answers, however I found it extremely useful to go back to professors and use contacts made in college trough ASHRAE society?"

In the afternoon we took technical trip to Energy Star rated 300S. Wacker Drive Office Building. The goal of the trip was to show us ways of improving energy efficiency in large office buildings. Property managers of the skyscraper on Wacker Drive used a combination of an energy-tracking system provided by ComEd, steamguard retrofits, and conservation strategy to reduce the annual gas consumption by an average of 10.2 percent and electric consumption by approximately 5 percent.

On Monday we attended the 61st AHREXPO?, held at Chicago's McCormick Place. The event was among its biggest and best of all-time. More than 54,000 registered HVAC/R professionals (including nearly 35,000 attendees and over 19,000 exhibitor personnel) filled the aisles looking for the latest products and technologies on display from more than 1,900 exhibiting companies during the industry's largest HVAC/R event.

The 2009 show was larger than last year's very successful New York show and now ranks as the second largest AHREXPO, just behind the 2006 Chicago Show in terms of the number of exhibiting companies (1,911). The 2009 event also ranks as the fourth largest AHREXPO of all-time in terms of square footage (396,048 net square feet). Other impressive figures included:

* 34,973 attendees

* 19,095 exhibitor personnel

* 5,383 international attendees

* 383 exhibiting companies from outside the U.S.

Many participants as well as show management were very pleased with the quantity and quality of attendees, especially given the current economic conditions.