Starting 2024 with celebration
Jan 9, 2024
As you are reading this edition of Boating Industry Canada News Week Digest, I am again attending the ABYC Standards Week, this year in Annapolis, Maryland where the ABYC is headquartered. This year Standards Week includes a celebration for the ABYC’s 70th Anniversary. We will be reporting more on that in News Week Digest next week.
Last year the event was held in New Orleans, Louisiana and at that event, I was honoured to be presented the ABYC Horizon Award by Dometic Marine America’s President, Eric Fetchko. It was a very special moment for me, but Standards Week is a really interesting event attended by many senior marine industry engineers and designers. They meet at Standards Week to actually “set the standards” for engineering, performance and safety, for the boats and related products we all sell and service. Training and education are also key parts of the ABYC range of services.
While there I plan to attend a special Marine Trades Accreditation Program meeting to learn more about the review commission and how they are focused on schools and workforce development. We will report more on that next week and at the Toronto International Boat Show NMMA Canada Industry Breakfast as well.
At the Industry Breakfast we will also celebrate this year’s NMMA Canada Hall of Fame inductee. I hope you can be there in person for that.
In this edition of News Week Digest we also have an announcement that Georgian College is offering a special ABYC Marine Systems Certification at Georgian College this February. We understand that this will be the only in-person certification course available so far in 2024 so we hope you plan to take advantage of that!
As we all start this new year, with war in the Middle East, uncertainty about interest rates and political issues in our North American markets, I feel like there is light at the end of the tunnel and that 2024 can be a really solid year for our industry but we will need all the information we can gather to navigate our way through these next few months.
The presentations at the NMMA Canada Industry Breakfast will be a great starting point I’m sure. Hope to see you there!
Andy Adams – Editor
