As I mentioned last month, my position with Chem-Man requires me to do quite a bit of traveling. Although I miss my wife and dogs at home, I do enjoy where my work trips land me. Believe it or not, I am currently writing this article while awaiting my next flight. I am on my way home from attending the Michigan Ag Aviation Association Convention.
My experience there was rather enjoyable. I had the opportunity to meet some of our current users for the first time and make the acquaintance of all the other pilots and operators that the MAAA consists of. I met some outstanding individuals, learned a good bit, swapped some stories, and had many a good laugh.
I decided while I was there to take the opportunity to soak in all the information I could. I sat in all the classes that the attendees participated in to obtain their CEU credits. A representative from the Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development (MDARD) informed us of many new updates and changes to their administration.
One of the updates that stood out was some recent regulatory changes and record-keeping requirements. The burden of record-keeping can be a daunting task for operators, but it was an excellent opportunity for me to showcase a new report and some recent improvements we have made to the program.
A few individuals I met discussed their operations with me. I found what they told me intriguing, and it made me think of all the other interesting operations and their workflows that I have encountered over this season. Having spent most of my life around flying services whose primary focus was treating rice, for the longest time growing up, I was oblivious to what other operations looked like outside of the delta.
Although Ag Pilots are similar in the sense of the type of work they do, they differ drastically from operation to operation. Spending time and working with operations across the United States and Canada has opened my eyes and allowed me to see how we can make improvements and make Chem-Man even better. Every operation I visit, or operator I meet is a new chance for me to receive input, listen to feedback, and bring those suggestions and ideas back to Chem-Man.
Regina and the Chem-Man team love to embrace new technologies and implement new features into our program to make the work of our customers easier and more efficient. Within the last 24 hours, we released a new report, and a new location sort feature, and made improvements to how our reports can be generated.
You can expect to see more improvements and features available as we near the end of the year. Convention season is just now beginning, and I look forward to traveling to all the various places we are scheduled to be. I hope to see you all at your local convention!
