Attendance figures approached the 200 mark for FPDA's Annual Convention, held at Marriott's Sawgrass Resort & Spa in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla., April 30–May 3.

In welcoming attendees to the event, FPDA president Mike Marthold reported that there were more individual companies represented at the meeting than in recent years, and a total of 37 percent of the association's membership present for the event.

Marthold is president of Wainbee Ltd., Vancouver, British Columbia. He also said FPDA membership is steady, that revenues are up, and gave special thanks to those who turned out for the meeting.

Among the convention highlights, FPDA was honored for its support of FIRST, a national high school engineering competition.

Don Spradlin, chairman of the Fluid Power Education Foundation, presented the award—a photo collage of recent FIRST competitions nationwide—to Marthold. The collage will hang in FPDA headquarters in Cherry Hill, N.J.

FIRST—which means, "For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology"—is a competition that brings together high school students and industry professionals to solve engineering problems. FPDA participates in the FIRST Robotics Competition, in which teams of high school students build robots to perform specific tasks. The students build the robots with kits—one of which is a pneumatics kit, to which many FPDA companies contribute products.

Speakers at the event included former White House director of economic policy Todd Buchholz; futurist John Mahaffie; consultant Michael Gerber, of E-Myth Worldwide; FPDA legal counsel Bruce Kasten; and industry consultant Dr. Al Bates, president of Boulder, Colo.—based Profit Planning Group.

At the end of the convention, Steve Ellis of Becho, Inc., Div. of H&P Technologies, Farmington Hills, Mich., was elected FPDA president for the 2006–2007 term.

YES, FPDA's young executives group, elected Brian Kundinger, Jr., of Kundinger Controls, as president for the coming year. John Thornton of GS Hydraulics was elected vice chairman; and Keith Elphick of The Knotts Co. will serve as immediate past president of YES.

FPDA will head to Chicago later this year for its Fall Meeting, to be held Nov. 2–5 at the Westin Michigan Avenue.