Here's a picture of Spectra IS's tent set up with the crane they brought as a demo for students to get in and operate. I wasn't able to talk to the representatives from Spectra but I talked to Dannette Beane for a while. It was about 3:30 and her and some others were packing up tables and displays. I watched as some students operated the crane, trying to pick up and move a concrete block. I wanted to try it out, but there were some other students in line waiting to operate it, but there wasn't a line for the excavation simulator that was set up by American Infrastructure. I walked over to the trailer and introduced myself to the AI representative, Alex, I think. We talked briefly about his company and how my dad was involved in civil construction and learned that the company's offices are based out of Chantilly, Va. I was just being nice because infrastructure construction doesn't really interest me.
Finally I climbed into the trailer and sat down in the seat. I chose a basic excavation demo to try and get a feel for the controls. After stuggling for a couple minutes figuring out what pedals and joystick did what, Alex suggested I try a sample scenario where I had to load excavated dirt into the back of a dump truck. I was working the excavator for some time, but after a while it became repetative and hot, and there were two other guys in line who seemed pretty eager to give it a shot so I let them. I thanked Alex for letting me play with the simulator and he gave me a brochure that I looked at when I got home but figured I would probably never show too much interest in the company because I guess it's not really a field that I would want to pursue.