“We were up in a customer focus group in Milwaukee not long ago. We had companies there from Fortune 100 to mom and pops,” said the VP of safety for a major distributor. “I’d say seven out of ten had had recent brushes with OSHA. So OSHA is still a big driver of sales, no doubt about it.”

No, they didn’t turn off the lights and locked the doors. The show definitely goes on, and when you’re inside the expo or attending education sessions, the ugly world of federal government shutdowns seems far far away.

1 – Ties are out. The men’s tie business must be dying a slow death. Of 13,000 people at the Congress and Expo, you might count the number wearing ties on one hand. OK, maybe on both hands. Business casual rules, no doubt. Many attendees are comfortable in jeans and sports shirt. You don’t see many suits at all. Mostly it is the speakers in suits. And certainly not all of them.

It’s no secret speakers sometimes go out of their way to come up with a catchy title to fill a room with attendees. This is much more common in the safety field than say industrial hygiene, where many session topics are narrow and technical. Anyway, at this year’s Congress & Expo, speakers are again playing games with their presentation titles. Here is a selection of them:

Here at the 2013 NSC Congress & Expo, an Egyptian surgeon, Alaa Zidan, who now works as a health and safety consultant in Bahrain, gave a presentation, “Positive Safety Culture and Emotional Intelligence,” that was probably unlike any safety presentation most in the audience had ever heard.

Why are companies not known for selling safety products, such as Staples, Cintas, Caterpillar, Honeywell, and Kimberly-Clark all here at the 2013 NSC Congress & Expo -- a number of them with expansive floor space?

The NSC Congress & Expo takes on more of an international flavor each year. As per usual in recent years, you have the “China Village,” a group of dozens of small mostly PPE Chinese suppliers separated by thin white pegboard walls.

The results of the highly successful “ISHM Safety Management Professional of the Year” are in. ISHM is the Institute for Safety and Health Management, a certification organization focused on educating safety and health managers in executive-level skills and certifying their expertise in communicating with C-Suite personnel on critical safety issues.

DuPont was awarded Monday morning at the 2013 NSC Congress and Expo opening session for integrating environmental, health and safety management with business operations as a cornerstone of corporate financial prosperity.

The Campbell Institute – the National Safety Council’s center of excellence for environmental, health and safety management – has introduced a new white paper, “Transforming EHS Performance Measurement through Leading Indicators” at the 2013 NSC Congress & Expo.