Don't bluff your way through the season. Draw the winning knowledge you need from our expert-led education sessions.
This year’s Symposium sessions bring together industry experts and snow and ice professionals for a mix of workshops, concurrent sessions and mini-learning opportunities for multiple roles.
NOTE: Sessions and schedule times are subject to change.
This year’s Symposium education sessions bring together industry experts and snow and ice professionals
for a mix of workshops, concurrent sessions and mini-learning opportunities for multiple roles.
Adding liquids to your ice management toolbox requires a careful approach that blends strategy, cost analysis, science and application best practices.
A mix of classroom training and hands-on experiences with peer experts will deliver a comprehensive look at building a liquids program.
Time: 8:30 am-4 pm
Cost: $115 (choice of one pre-conference event is included with SIMA+ Pass)
*Lunch and transportation are included
Move past the "math" of bidding and dive into the psychology of the sale. In this workshop we are shifting the focus from what you charge to how you position your value, gain access to elusive decision-makers, build a book of business through relentless relationship management and more!
Speakers are still being finalized for this session.
Time: 9:00 am-3:30 pm
Cost: $115 (choice of one pre-conference event is included with SIMA+ Pass)
*Lunch and workshop materials are included
In an era of unprecedented challenges, the path to your organization's greatest success lies in finding solutions together. Join Jeremy Poincenot as he shows how prioritizing interdependence drives powerful results:
Individually: Experience greater job satisfaction, stronger relationships, less turnover, and increased loyalty.
As a Team: Achieve enhanced performance, better connection, more alignment, and a shared purpose.
As an Organization: Gain improved efficiency, increased creativity and collaboration, and better results from every initiative.
Discover how working interdependently is the key to collective success and individual fulfillment!
Sponsored by Caterpillar, Inc.
We’ve been taught for decades that the way to win in business is simple: lower your price, add new features, or outspend the competition on marketing. But what we’ve been taught is wrong. In today’s marketplace, price wars are a race to the bottom, and innovation gets copied almost instantly. The truth is, nearly every company is now selling a commodity – whether they admit it or not.
So why do some brands still rise above the noise while others fade into irrelevance? Because customers don’t talk about transactions. They talk about experiences. This keynote reveals why the last true differentiator left in business is the one your competitors can’t copy: how you make people feel. And it will leave you WISE to the power of customer experience.
Jill Valdez, LINK Consulting
Cracking the Communication Code is built for snow and ice professionals who have to communicate fast and clearly when the stakes are high. In the middle of an ice event, one wrong message can create confusion, frustration, or conflict. This workshop helps crews understand the four main communication styles, how to work better together under pressure, and how to de-escalate tension before it blows up. Practical tools ... real world teamwork!
Kellan Stevenson, Paradigm Services; Ken Boegeman, CSP, ASM, Swinter Group; Matt Brewer, EMI
Adding liquids to your ice management toolbox doesn’t have to be cost-prohibitive. Hear from panelists who’ve made the jump by thinking outside of the box to invest on their terms.
Nick Klotz, EPM - Professional Grounds Services
Snow and ice companies under $3 million often struggle between being too big to wing it and too small for a full executive team. This session shows how one small contractor successfully implemented big-operation strategies—like simple leadership rhythms, basic scorecards, and culture habits—long before his revenue matched. Learn practical, low-overhead methods—including essential meetings, key metrics, and aligning your team—to run your sub-$3M business like the larger company you aspire to be.
Pahuna Sharma Laden, Lagraphia
Property managers are already using ChatGPT and AI-powered search to research and shortlist snow and ice contractors, often as an early step in vendor selection, sometimes even before an RFP is issued. This session explains how AI decides which contractors to recommend, the visibility and trust signals that drive inclusion, and the common gaps that make strong operators invisible. Attendees will leave with a practical checklist and a 6- to 12-month action plan to protect renewals and win more routes.
Brian Ivey, NorCast Consulting
Winter storms often strain contractors' profits, schedules, resources, and customer relationships due to costly mistakes rooted in misjudging the weather. This session merges actual storm failures with a contractor-centric weather playbook, teaching attendees how to convert forecast data into concrete decisions about timing, pretreatment, deployment, and cleanup. Attendees will gain a practical, repeatable framework to eliminate weather unpredictability, boost storm performance, and avoid expensive errors.
Jenny Girard, The Integra Group
Jason Ostrander, Eastern LLC
Kristy Sieve, mertz design
Danny Kerr, Breakthrough Academy
Speaker TBA
Michele Kruezer
Sleep specialist Michele Kreuzer reveals the hidden costs of sleep deprivation—from costly mistakes and safety risks to decreased innovation and turnover. Through personal stories, science-backed strategies, and real-world examples, she shows leaders how to transform sleep from an afterthought into a strategic advantage that drives measurable business results—even in taxing industries like snow and ice management.
Michael Wagner, CSP, ASM, Designscapes Colorado
This session moves beyond the technical specs to focus on the strategic and financial aspects of fleet management. Learn to optimize your equipment's financial engine by mastering market timing, weighing the pros and cons of renting versus owning, and creating a multi-year acquisition and divestment plan for a healthy balance sheet.
Danny Kerr, Breakthrough Academy
Struggling to make successful management hires? This playbook is for you. Learn a character-based recruiting process that will help you find key middle managers for your business. We'll guide you through the essential characteristics of great middle managers and how to build a targeted recruiting funnel to secure them.
Nicole and Ken Boegeman, Swinter Group
For snow and ice pros who avoid Excel like a February sidewalk. This beginner-level session will help you break the ice. Learn how to structure your data, sort work orders, and subtotal storm activity so you can stop digging through messy paper or guessing at performance. We’ll use storm data examples to show you how to turn spreadsheets into tools, not torture. No prior Excel experience required, just a willingness to plow forward.
Speaker TBA
A flawed snow contract is a liability that often goes unnoticed until a crisis, like a blizzard or a major unpaid bill. This session teaches you to audit your agreements. We'll analyze contract structure to eliminate harmful language, select the best portfolio structure, and insert protective clauses to safeguard your time, equipment, and business.
Panelists: Mike McCarron, Imageworks Landscaping; Mike Mason, CSP, The Lawn Pro; Wyatt Keoski, CSP, MSNW Group
In this high-impact panel discussion, seasoned veterans from low-snow regions share their playbooks for de-risking their businesses to be profitable whether it doesn’t snow at all or you get hit with a once-in-a-lifetime storm.
Speakers TBA
Members of the Snow Commanders peer group will lead a discussion on how to build an organizational structure that reduces internal bottlenecks, fosters company growth, ensures a strong leadership pipeline and more.
Randall Dean | The E-mail Sanity Expert
Dive into the most common areas of productivity loss (and possible gain!) afflicting many busy professionals: e-mail and input overload, managing multiple projects/tasks, maintaining “traction” when interrupted, clearing mental clutter for better focus, keeping staff on task, tracking deliverables, using new powerful AI tools, and better managing your calendar and contacts for better time and relationship management. Learn immediately useful strategies and tips for finding a few minutes on your daily tasks, activities, and actions, leading to (hopefully!) an extra hour of productivity every day.
George Urvari, Knowledge Tree Consulting
Session description TBA
Phill Sexton, ASM, WIT Advisers
In the high-stakes world of snow and ice management, a missed detail isn't just a mistake—it’s a drain on your bottom line. This workshop is designed to help you move beyond "guesstimates" and transition into a data-driven bidding powerhouse. We will break down the mechanics of a bulletproof estimate, including focusing on often-overlooked variables that turn a profitable contract into a liability. Learn how to build a pricing model that protects your margins regardless of what the forecast holds.
Randall Dean, The E-mail Sanity Expert
Stop drowning in email. Learn a proven system to tame your inbox and take control. This program teaches you how to build a personal "e-mail infrastructure" to keep your inbox efficient and organized. You'll learn strategies for quick-email elimination, junk/spam mitigation, and technical tips for MS Outlook and Gmail.
Levi Jett, Jett Winter Advisors
In this fast-paced, hands-on session, Levi Jett will demonstrate how ChatGPT can revolutionize everyday operations for snow and ice professionals. From writing contracts and scopes of work to building job postings, marketing plans, and even your own custom GPT, this session will show exactly how to turn AI from a novelty into a real productivity engine. You’ll see live examples of prompts that save hours of administrative work, improve documentation quality, and help communicate more clearly with clients, crews, and stakeholders.
Todd Stone, The Cleaver Company
This session is designed to provide a comprehensive, step-by-step methodology for identifying, pursuing, winning, and maintaining high-value, "signature" type properties within any competitive market. Signature properties—those marquee accounts, prominent locations, or highly desirable contracts that define market leadership—require a strategic and nuanced approach.
Still struggling to find and keep quality hand labor? You aren’t alone—but the solution might be in the room. Join us for an audience-led session where we crowdsource peer-tested ways to source, onboard, and retain your most essential workforce.
The 2025-26 winter introduced a "perfect storm" for the snow industry: Depleted stockpiles, skyrocketing prices, municipal prioritization squeezing private supply lines. The "business as usual" approach to salt supply management is no longer sustainable. This moderated session brings together attendees to dissect the current crisis and build a shared playbook for survival and profitability.
Join this interactive session to swap manual headaches for smarter workflows. We’re skipping the lecture and getting straight into a real-world talk about how digital tools can actually make your life easier when the snow starts falling. This isn't a sales pitch. It’s a chance to huddle with other pros, audit your current process, and find the right tech to help you run a tighter ship this winter.
Moderator: Jenny Girard, The Integra Group
Moderator: Nick Klotz, CSP, ASM, EPM Professional Grounds Services
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Kick off the Symposium early with one of our pre-conference workshops: Implementing liquids into your ice management operations or Sales and business development. (Additional fee applies. One workshop is included in the SIMA+ Pass.)
In an era of unprecedented challenges, the path to your organization's greatest success lies in finding solutions together. Join Jeremy Poincenot as he shows how prioritizing interdependence drives powerful results:
Discover how working interdependently is the key to collective success and individual fulfillment!
Choose from five sessions focused on key topics like operations, business, sales & marketing, risk and more.
Choose from five sessions focused on key topics like operations, business, sales & marketing, risk and more.
Choose from five sessions focused on key topics like operations, business, sales & marketing, risk and more.
Choose from five sessions focused on key topics like operations, business, sales & marketing, risk and more.
Set your alarms—you won't want to miss the last two sessions of the Symposium. Come prepared to participate as we crowdsource technology and salt supply solutions.
Spend 30 minutes on the trade show floor chatting with peers about Life, Leadership and Lessons in the snow and ice management industry. These are moderated discussions so come prepared to contribute your experiences.
We’ve been taught for decades that the way to win in business is simple: lower your price, add new features, or outspend the competition on marketing. But what we’ve been taught is wrong.
In today’s marketplace, price wars are a race to the bottom, and innovation gets copied almost instantly. The truth is, nearly every company is now selling a commodity – whether they admit it or not.
So why do some brands still rise above the noise while others fade into irrelevance? Because customers don’t talk about transactions. They talk about experiences. The Experience Maker Dan Gingiss will share why the last true differentiator left in business is the one your competitors can’t copy: how you make people feel. And it will leave you WISE to the power of customer experience.
