Technical Meeting – April 2012
The Northwest Chapter hosted a technical meeting on 3–4 April 2012 at the Hampton Inn and Suites – Seattle Center in Seattle, Washington. There were 32 attendees at the meeting. There were 11 paper presentations on 3 April. Presenting companies included Cascade Steel Rolling Mills, Nucor Steel Seattle Inc., Nalco Company, and Air Clean Technologies. Following the presentations, there was a reception and dinner. On 4 April, attendees enjoyed a tour of the Nucor Steel Seattle, Inc. facilities. Also at the meeting, the Northwest Chapter Outstanding Service Award was presented to Gerry Giraldo, honoring him for his many years of dedicated service to the Northwest Member Chapter.

2012 Western Conference – March 2012
The AIST San Francisco, Northwest and Southern California Member Chapters joined together for the biannual AIST Western Conference. This year’s event was hosted by the San Francisco Member Chapter. The event was held on 1–2 March 2012 at the Marriott San Francisco Union Square in sunny San Francisco, California. There were 73 full conference attendees. The event opened on Thursday, 1 March with a golf outing at the Harding Park Golf Course, which hosted 52 golfers. There was also a plant tour at USS-POSCO Industries in Pittsburg, Calif., with 25 attendees. A welcome reception was held that evening and featured vendor exhibits from 17 participating companies. Friday’s program opened with a gathering in the vendor display area for breakfast. After breakfast, technical paper sessions were held and lasted through the afternoon. Eight technical papers were presented from USS-POSCO Industries, AirClean Technologies, Nucor Steel Seattle Inc. and California Steel Industries. That evening, a dinner was held and featured a keynote presentation by Christopher Thornberg, founding partner of Beacon Economics. Mr. Thornberg’s presentation was entitled, “Recovering From the Recovery.” Also at the dinner, the AIST Reliability Achievement Silver Award was presented to USS-POSCO Industries by Colleen Reeves, chair of AIST’s Maintenance & Reliability Technology Committee. John Cox accepted the award. AIST Executive Director Ron Ashburn was also in attendance and gave a brief overview of AISTech 2012 — The Iron & Steel Technology Conference and Exposition. The San Francisco Member Chapter would like to thank the sponsors, attendees, vendors and presenters who helped make this year’s event a success. The Northwest Member Chapter will host the next Western Conference in 2014.