The SFMA Conference Education Committee has put together an exciting and informative education program for the 2023 Conference in Salt Lake City, Utah. Each month, speakers presenting at the conference will be featured. The Featured Speakers of the Month for August are Lorenzo Lopez, CSFM, and John Mascaro.
Lorenzo Lopez, CSFM, is the owner of SouthWest Sports Fields – Autmow. He will be presenting “Robots in Sports Fields: Extending Your Crew with Automation.”
New technology shouldn’t be considered scary. We saw fear and pushback when central-controlled irrigation systems arrived, now we can’t live without those systems. Lopez will share how simple robots can remove mundane tasks from your daily checklist and show you how groundskeepers have successfully utilized robots into their current operations.
Three of the main things you will take away from this class will be:
- Robots incorporate correct turfgrass practices more efficiently than we have been doing.
- Robots are trained to do mundane tasks (they won’t take your jobs).
- Robots and automation are coming whether we like it or not. The sooner we accept and learn how to use them, the sooner we can add value to our positions as sports field managers and add ‘Robot Expert’ to our resumes.
John Mascaro is the president of Turf-Tec International. He will be presenting “John Mascaro’s Photo Quiz Comes Alive.”
This is a live version of the Photo Quiz article that has appeared each month in Golf Course Management magazine since September 2002 and SportsField Management magazine since 2006. The live Photo Quiz is an interactive presentation with questions on what caused a particular turfgrass problem and an answer on how it was solved.
Presentation objectives:
- To show common and uncommon problems that occur on athletic fields and how sports field managers deal with these problems.
- The Photo Quiz is one of the member’s favorite features in the magazine, and the live version is a real audience pleaser as it shows “the rest of the story.”
- Learning to solve problems and overcome adversity.