GlobeSt.com: What was your biggest surprise at Greenbuild?

Purtell: The most impressive part of it is the number of people that attend that event and the fact that, at least at this point, it doesn't appear that the economy is having an impact on what they are doing. Part of that could be that a lot of this had been planned before the worst news came down, but I was impressed with the passion you see out of that group and the shear numbers. On the tradeshow the exhibitors are there from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. selling and working the crowd. I was there for two days of it and was never on the floor when there weren't a lot of people. I'm sure the exhibitors were happy with the traffic.

On a side note, they had some issues in registration the year before. To their credit, they went out, did some research, and figured out how to do it. Registration was as efficient as I've ever witnessed. It's an excellent operation.