Podcast: eChem Expo Brings High-Value Training to Manufacturers

eChem Expo, recently acquired by Chemical Processing’s parent company EndeavorB2B, returns April 7-9, 2026, in Kingsport, Tennessee. Conference Director Damon Shackelford discusses the event's evolution from a regional gathering to a comprehensive three-part experience featuring an expo floor with nearly 200 vendors, professional conference sessions and technical seminars. This year's theme, "Energizing Growth and Resilience in a Competitive Landscape," addresses critical industry challenges including workforce development, AI integration, operational excellence and safety. New for 2026: inspector recertification credits meeting API guidelines. The market-led conference builds content through 100-plus stakeholder interviews with major manufacturers like Eastman Chemical, BAE Systems and BWXT, offering affordable professional development within driving distance for attendees from Cincinnati to Atlanta.

Transcript

(Edited for clarity)

Welcome to Chemical Processing's Distilled podcast. You can find this podcast and its transcript at ChemicalProcessing.com, and download it on your favorite player. I'm Traci Purdum, editor-in-chief of CP, and joining me today is Damon Shackelford, conference director for eChem Expo, which was recently acquired by Chemical Processing's parent company, EndeavorB2B. I thought this would be a great topic for discussion — getting to learn more about the event and you. Thanks for joining me, Damon.

Damon: Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it.

Traci: Let’s let our listeners in on all things Damon. How did you get into this field?

Damon: When I was chatting with our teammates about doing this podcast, I told them I was going to introduce myself as: Hi, my name is Damon Bryan Shackelford. I am new to Endeavor Business Media. I am the man with a face for podcasts and a voice for silent pictures.

Traci: You have a good voice.

Damon: Thank you. I'm thrilled to be part of Endeavor right now. I came here on what I'd describe as a pragmatic adventure. My entire career has been this strange adventure of twists and turns into places I wasn't expecting. I actually started out in fine arts. I was a studio artist and went into the art gallery scene, became a gallery manager, hanging shows around the Appalachian Circuit in Boone and places like that.

At some point I decided this was a great gig for a single guy, but I needed to settle down, provide for a family and get health care benefits. I looked around the area for top employers and spotted Eastman Chemical — the top employer for this end of the state, maybe the whole state. I said to myself, "They look fun. Let's try them." So I went back, picked up a small chemistry degree — not a big one, just a two-year degree, but enough to be dangerous — and joined Eastman.

I took off with the science part of my career through polymer research, polymer pilot plant and what was once called the Innovation Lab, which connected me to the Industrial Design Society of America. That led to university outreach, corporate communications and eventually engineering. How does an art major go from hanging art gallery shows to working with engineers on a regular basis? I loved that community and felt like I fit in nicely. I started doing software applications because I knew a lot of people in the market, then got into augmented and virtual reality and connected to those associations.

It was like a Tolkien adventure across Middle-earth — I never knew where it was going to go next. Then Endeavor popped into my life at what I thought was the perfect time to go back to my creative roots. I could bookend my life, having opened with something creative and now closing with something creative. Honestly, it's been like Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory around here. I love it — love the people I'm working with, and nobody pays me to say that.

Traci: You're basically a Renaissance man with all this background. Let's talk about eChem Expo and how you've morphed all of this into that.

Damon: One of my best friends, a Ph.D. chemical engineer, looked at me one day and said I've had the weirdest career trajectory of anybody he's ever known. That's how I got connected to eChem Expo as well — another pragmatic adventure.

I was in the middle of transitioning into worldwide engineering when the owner of eChem Expo, who was tightly connected with worldwide engineering and construction, nominated me to be part of the planning team. I started bringing in really interesting and novel businesses I'd met on my previous journey. One thing led to another, and I became a regular on the planning team.

The owner had built the expo from around 2000 to 2024, and it grew beyond a regional event. It needed to go to its next level, but for health reasons, he couldn't take it there. Endeavor saw the perfect market fit. The owner saw the perfect team to take the expo to the next level but couldn't be part of transitioning a sole proprietorship into a large enterprise corporation. I had done similar things and been around the conference circuit as a speaker, so Chris Farrell, the owner, nominated me. For reasons I'll probably never understand, he brought me aboard.

Ever since then, the expo has had not only me bringing the history and details of what's been happening behind the scenes over the years, with the support of the previous owner, but now this incredible professional team that's so experienced in events. I'm thrilled every time we run into an issue — and there are always issues with events. It's like putting on a Broadway play. The audience will never know what happened behind the scenes when the curtain raises and lowers and they give a standing ovation. It's the same here. I'm amazed every time this team bumps up against something — they just click, get things done and come up with novel solutions. It's been a grand adventure.

Traci: Let's get granular. First, let's talk about the dates. What are the things you've seen evolve over the years, and what can we expect this year?

Damon: The event has a preconference on April 7 with an ISA golf tournament, perimeter tours of Eastman — sort of like a tour of Hollywood stars' homes where you get on a bus and an Eastman volunteer takes you around the perimeter of the site. It's over 990 acres, really impressive. We also have long-form training available that day.

The main conference is April 8–9. It's a three-part event. There's the expo floor with vendors and their wares. There's a professional conference with keynote speakers and executives from all over talking on various panel subjects and TED Talk-style presentations. And there are professional seminars that give professional development hours and continuing education credit based on Tennessee PDH and API guidelines.

The expo grew into this three-part format from 2000 until now. It also grew stakeholder-wise. Eastman Chemical was the major player for quite a while, but the expo has since grown to encompass BAE Systems, BWXT and their affiliate, Nuclear Fuel Services. Those have become major players.

What I've seen is this is essentially a market-led expo, conference and seminar system where local executives, in an interview process, tell us what they want and what they see coming in the next two years — particularly regarding their capital investments, access to capital and initiatives they see coming down the road. Then we interview the people reporting to those executives, and they give us the nuts and bolts — where the rubber meets the road. The conference gets built based on their needs.

From that, you get wonderful tracks and amazing content. I've seen growth in attendees. We've had people from Europe come to visit and speak, but on the whole, attendees go as far north as Cincinnati, as far south as Atlanta, east to D.C. and west to St. Louis — plus outliers from Europe, California and Texas. We've had a big influx from Texas this year.

The conference has been growing in stakeholder and executive input, content and attendance. This year's been no different. We just announced our energy panel last week, and as soon as that went out — these were VPs from big, well-known companies — we had an engineer from NASA JPL reach out asking for help justifying travel. He really wanted to see this energy panel. I'm like, "Well, I can help you." I haven't talked to anybody from NASA in probably 10 years, when I was doing university outreach and a NASA engineer and I happened to be at MIT recruiting and ended up at dinner together. Now here I am, and these people are reaching out on a personal basis. That's a testimony to how the event's been growing in attendees, content and stakeholders. It's literally "build it and they will come," and by golly, they're coming.

Traci: I think it's great to be a fly on the wall because the basis is what these big stakeholders want for their own workforce, and now others can benefit from seeing what's happening there. That's an excellent way to build these types of things.

This year's theme is Energizing Growth and Resilience in a Competitive Landscape. That feels very intentional given everything happening in manufacturing right now. What conversations are you hoping to spark with that theme?

Damon: We have all sorts of interesting conversations lined up on resilience in manufacturing. Manufacturing is in an over-constrained problem right now where it needs to grow but doesn't know exactly where to grow. Access to capital and capital projects are being announced left and right. They're onshoring a lot of things, so they're competing for energy, material and talent. They're frenemies — they all get along, but they're still competing.

We're hoping to spark conversations around successful adaptation of their people, capital and energy needs, and how they're adapting to these difficult and challenging events. The world is changing daily. Individuals in the trenches need mental, emotional and behavioral support. The processes themselves are subject to both internal and external demands. You have the big question of energy, the big question of what AI means for industrial spaces, and individual needs — how do you build a resilient workforce, a resilient organization? How do you, the individual contributor, build a resilient mindset so you can successfully navigate the safety challenges and heavy workload being put on you?

We're trying to spark conversations hitting every aspect of resilience in these challenging times. We've been very fortunate to narrow it down to the areas we have: industrial artificial intelligence — what are we aiming at and how do we think we'll get there? That's our moonshot panel. We have workforce development — how are we going to deal with the gray tsunami? We have expertise walking out faster than we can develop new expertise coming in. That's been a challenge for at least the last five years or more.

Operational excellence — how do you keep a high-end, world-class operational organization and workforce? Some of these continuous processes plan shutdown periods so they can — sometimes it's on the order of 5 to 10 years between shutdowns for processes in pharmaceutical, food, chemical and petrochemical manufacturing. How do you accelerate your turnaround and get the most out of it? You're going to shut down, upgrade, fix things, improve safety and do all sorts of wonderful things, but you have to get back up fast and do it in the most efficient manner possible. That's a huge issue with some of our aging assets.

Environmental health and safety — in every single interview, the need for resilience in safety, both mechanical, electrical and personal safety, came up. Your No. 1 piece of personal protective equipment is your mind. We did over 100 interviews just to get the content for this expo, and safety was No. 1 in every conversation, no matter what the actual topic was. It has to be.

Instrumentation and process reliability — very straightforward. Novel equipment design — we can't make things the way we used to, and you can't just go to the shelf and find equipment that will do XYZ anymore. We're manufacturing macro and micro materials in ways never before seen. Novel equipment design is going to be a fascinating track. We have one of our Ph.D.s as track manager over that one. She's great. Can't wait for people to meet her.

All of these things are important. Our attendees think so, our stakeholders think so, the people we've talked to think so, and we all think it for a reason — because it is.

The resilience needed to address all these areas is enormous. Our keynote is going to be the response to Hurricane Helene by the Tennessee Department of Transportation. What's that got to do with energizing growth and resilience in a competitive landscape? Well, there is nothing more resilient than addressing an event such as a hurricane this far inland in the Appalachian Smoky Mountain region by a team and discipline that was not set up to address this. A hurricane is not on anybody's 10-year plan for employee development. Nobody in the Smoky Mountain area sat down and said, "You know what we should plan for? A hurricane."

But the local teams rose to the occasion. The civil engineers — state, local, federal — they're not necessarily trained to move fast and save lives. That's the expertise of other disciplines. But they rose to the occasion and found themselves, instead of designing and planning for an off-ramp from a four-lane, designing and planning for an off-ramp for a disaster. They had to address human life in a way they weren't expecting, but they did it. What a great example, particularly for our area and the technical community here, of resilience, adaptability and addressing difficult and challenging events — bringing the unexpected into control. What an amazing keynote.

Traci: When I saw that keynote, it took me a minute to get my arms around it. But I think it fits perfectly because you cannot plan for every single event. There's just no way. But you can plan to pivot and address things you know how to address and make them fit the need at that exact moment. I think that's going to be an interesting keynote to think about. It's the higher level, getting your arms around it and realizing that aha moment of: Yes, we cannot plan for every single thing that's going to happen at our facilities.

You mentioned the Department of Transportation is a little slower-moving sometimes by design because of the risk. That's a lot of what we're dealing with in chemical facilities — a lot of risk and management of change you have to consider before you do these things. I think it's going to be an interesting talk.

Talking a little bit about all the benefits — there are the high-level, cerebral things, but then there are the granular, hands-on things this expo offers. Folks can get professional development hours, right?

Damon: That's right. We were specifically tasked by local asset managers, facilities directors and the VP over operations for a couple of local manufacturing sites with bringing on API-type training this go-round. So API 570, API 2000 — all these sorts of things the inspectors, facilities and asset management folks really need because they're in a position now with both super interesting new equipment being installed and sometimes 75- to 80-year-old equipment they need to keep running. How do they do that and stay abreast of the guidelines? API has some wonderful documents.

We went out and found people who could address those topics and teach a seminar. For example, we have a Ph.D. from Germany coming in to teach on API 2000. This guy's going to get into the differential equations and the foundations behind the document. I don't even qualify to attend that class — it's so deep. These are the practical, granular things we're bringing to bear this year at the specific request of past attendees. This is what they asked for, so this is what they get. You can't find that at larger events, I don't think. You don't get that level of customization.

Traci: You're adding inspector recertification. Is that the first time this year? Let's talk a little bit about that.

Damon: That's right, the first time. In 2024, one of the asset managers saw that we had PDH credits for practicing engineers, but there was nothing for the inspectors. They talked with the certifiers we had — we do our certification for PDH credits through the local chapter of AIChE. The local chapter and national group are amazing. They've been amazing partners with the expo for years, and we're going to continue that tradition.

The question came up: "Can I get inspector certification credit for this class?" They looked into it and said, "Yeah, it seems to meet the guidelines." So at the last minute, they issued a certificate. The asset manager said, "Thank you very much. May I have more?" And the other asset managers said, "Wow, we didn't know you could do that. Can we have some too?" It's sort of like putting candy out in front of kids — they're just all over it.

We reached into our bag of tricks. Endeavor has a great training team internally. They took a look and verified that, yeah, the certifications meet the guidelines. The AIChE chapters and national said, "Yeah, it meets the API guidelines." We reached out to API, had some of those folks who sit on those committees say, "Yeah, that meets the guidelines."

This is the first year we will offer certifications. These are not API certifications — they are not the governing body putting the stamp of approval on it — but it does meet their guidelines, and that's been verified. We're thrilled to invite upwards of several hundred inspectors to come in and get their continuing education credits — piping, atmospheric tanks recertifications, all sorts of wonderful things. They've given me a list: how to rerate pressure vessels — that's apparently API 510. I didn't know that. Nobody taught me that when I was coming up through technology, but here we are.

Traci: Very important things.

Damon: They know what they need, they've asked for it, and we're doing our best to provide it.

Traci: There are almost 200 vendors on the expo floor. How do you prevent this from becoming just another trade show where people collect swag and business cards?

Damon: Well, for one thing, we don't have a whole lot of swag. It tends to be very pragmatic. You don't really prevent a lot of that — there are some things that are just part of human nature. But you can minimize it.

We've minimized this through pragmatism. Over the years, many of the expo vendors themselves have grown up with the expo, so they're coming back again. They have sort of first right of refusal, and then we've opened the doors to new vendors. That call hasn't necessarily gone out, but we have twice as many requests for booth space as we actually have booths to offer. I'm not sure what we're going to do there.

The ultimate way to minimize people just walking in, shaking hands, getting swag and walking out is to offer them great content like the keynotes and seminars. Because it's an all-inclusive price, it's not like you walk in, shake hands with somebody from a particular analytical device manufacturing company and then leave. Instead, they probably look at the program and say, "Wait a second, there's something interesting over there on ultrasonic drying, and it doesn't cost me anything else to attend. So while I'm here, I think I'll go." And they do. They come in, expect one thing, get another and stay.

Traci: If someone's listening and is on the fence about attending — maybe they've never been to Kingsport or they're wondering if a regional show is worth their time — what's your 30-second pitch for why they should block off April 8–9, potentially the 7th as well, on their calendar?

Damon: I would tell them: Look, we are the highest-end professional conference you're going to find within a two- to four-hour drive of your location. We're the best ROI, best bang for your buck. You don't have travel budget — I know you don't. Everybody knows there is no travel budget. But here we are within driving distance.

You will get super-high-end conference content, super-technical seminars and some of the best vendors across the United States for very little money. I know it shouldn't come down to money, but it oftentimes does when it comes to justifying travel. This is an easy ROI. You're getting a lot for very little. The only thing you really have to commit is your travel, which is easy to control, and your time. This is the kind of event where you can walk away with professional-level content that will carry you through the next one to two years, and you're not going to get it anywhere else. There are plenty of other great conferences out there with their own excellent content, but ours is really unique for this area and at this cost.

Come to the conference. We also have some great networking. I'll buy you a whiskey. It's going to be a banger. We have added content and networking events to this thing that are just off the chart for this conference. And this is only the beginning of the globalization and step change for eChem Expo.

Traci: Well, Damon, thank you for giving us all this great insight into you and eChem Expo. I'm looking forward to learning more as we get closer to the event itself.

Listeners, if you want to stay on top of events and best practices, subscribe to this free podcast via your favorite podcast platform. You can also visit us at ChemicalProcessing.com for more tools and resources aimed at helping you achieve success. On behalf of Damon, I'm Traci, and this is Chemical Processing's Distilled podcast. Thanks for listening.

Damon: Thank you. Bye-bye.