Healthy Indoors Magazine - USA Edition

4 | April 2022 I had the opportunity to attend the Na- tional Air Duct Cleaners Association's (NADCA) 33 rd Annual Conference in Denver a few weeks back. It had been several years since I last attended one and I must admit that it always feels like going back to my early days in the industry. The younger version of me attended their first event way back in 1990. I was a newcomer to air duct cleaning and IAQ, but I did see the latter as the bigger pic- ture at that time and tailored my career focus to reach far beyond HAVC hygiene. Despite my subsequent path in the indoor environmental industry over the years, NADCA will always feel like my roots. I spent more than a decade as a board member and officer for the organization in its early days, and it clearly provided me with a launchpad into the national IAQ arena, as well as shaped a lot of my per- spective about the industry. Try as I will to the contrary, it seems I will always still be a duct cleaner—at least in part! It was great to see many of the people I started out in the industry with again, albeit a bit older (and wiser, perhaps). Gathering at the event's social functions with some of the old crew over cocktails made it seem like these 33 years really went by remarkably fast. NADCA was our "child" back when we were raising it in its formative years. It's good to see it grown up now and know that all of us had a part in that. I think back about all the career and life aspirations I had in the 1990s. I am fortu- nate to have many of them become reality, but certainly, even more of them either morphed or fell by the wayside through the decades. My time with NADCA was an interesting ride. I learned, struggled, and battled (at times) throughout my early evolution there in the indoor environmen- tal industry. I guess you can go home. Bob Krell Founder & Publisher Bob Krell Bob Krell is president of IAQ Technologies, Inc., a Syracuse, NY-based indoor environmental firm he founded in 1990, offering consulting, mitigation and training services to a variety of clients throughout the country and abroad. He co-founded IAQNET, LLC in 2013, and serves as publisher of its Healthy Indoors Magazine. Bob is the Producer/Director for the online video series, The Healthy Indoors Show, along with numerous other industry video projects and online events, and is Training Director for live distance learning offerings through IAQschool.online. Contact him at: bob@healthyindoors.com Returning to My Roots Publisher's Rant

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