Something in the world of floating have you stumped?
Show Highlights
Graham and Ashkahn finally take the time to answer the most anticipated question of the year. Now their ever loyal and patient fans will finally get the answer they’re looking for.
Show Resources
The Float Conference – Buy tickets, see dates, schedules, get accommodations, maps… everything you need to enjoy this special event.
Listen to Just the Audio
Transcription of this episode… (in case you prefer reading)
Graham: And today’s question, we actually had coming in from a few hundred different listeners. So, I thought it was about time we addressed it, which was, here, let me pull it out here. “Tell me more about your magical and enchanting float conference for 2018? How can I go? How can I give you all of my money?”
Ashkahn: Wow. That’s a great question.
Graham: Yeah, well, and we really appreciate it.
Ashkahn: It’s on everybody’s mind. Yeah. So, thank you for that genuine question from people out there. So, we got a Float Conference.
Graham: Woo!
Ashkahn: Yeah. It’s pretty exciting. It’s been happening since 2012, so this will be-
Graham: I was gonna say since 1901. You really jumped on my joke there, you know?
Ashkahn: This will be our seventh Float Conference that’s coming up here, and it’s in Portland, Oregon. We’ve always done them in Portland, Oregon.
Graham: That’s more than you can count on one hand, plus an extra thumb.
Ashkahn: Yeah, which is, I mean, that’s the real milestone that most people are going for. It’s good. For those of you who’ve never been to the Float Conference before, it’s basically kind of like a giant party where everybody from the float industry from around the world comes out and gets to hang out together.
Graham: And some confused people not from the float industry, too.
Ashkahn: Yeah, very, very unaware that they’re in the middle of a float tornado. But there are sometimes we’re in different buildings, and people are like, “what is going on here?”
But yeah, it’s super fun. People come out from all around the world who run float centers and are generally kind of in the float industry, and they come all out to Portland, Oregon and we have a couple days worth of talks from things like researchers presenting their newest data, Justin Feinstein always brings his crew with him from his lab and they get to share kind of the newest information they’ve been researching over the year.
Graham: Which is always really exciting. It’s actually, I think that’s a lot of people’s favorite part is actually getting got see the data for what floats are doing to people, you know?
Ashkahn: Uh-huh. So, yeah. That’s cool. Big float centers around the world. We usually invite a few people like out to give talks, generally kind of cool, interesting people somewhat related to the whole kind of float universe.
Graham: And a handful of really boring speakers that we just sort of sprinkle in-
Ashkahn: We pepper in. Make the other people look better, you know?
Graham: Yeah, yeah.
Ashkahn: That’s the goal.
Graham: It’s all about dynamic range, I think is what they recommend for conferences, you know?
Ashkahn: So, it is, I like this about all conferences, is just that you really get to go and learn about the absolute newest information happening, which is always cool. We go to a bunch of conferences and that’s always my favorite part. You just really feel like you’re on the kind of leading edge of information. That’s true of the Float Conference, too. I go there and I learn a bunch of stuff over the course of the weekend. I’m like, wait, what’s happening?
There’s a bunch of, especially nowadays, crazy stuff happening in the float world. There’s some serious research being done through the Air Force, and those people who are just starting to enter this world last year came out and presented what they were working on and where they were planning on their research going, and it’s cool just to see the stuff that is otherwise a little bit hidden in the float world, that you don’t know is happening behind the scenes and see where it’s going.
Graham: Yeah. New float tank launches every year at the float conference, which is always exciting to see what people bring out. Often times, we don’t even know ahead of time-
Ashkahn: Yeah.
Graham: People will just tell us, “We’re debuting some kind of new float technology,” and we get to be surprised along with everyone else when they roll it out.
Ashkahn: Yeah. Also, it’s just pretty much the greatest group of people you can gather into a room together. Everybody is super chill, they’re super relaxed, they’re really happy to be there, and they’re super happy to talk to each other and share information and help each other out. It’s a really community focused group of people, and this is the time that everyone actually gets to be together in one physical space.
Graham: Derrick Wyatt always describes it as a big float family reunion, but without any creepy uncles, and better food.
Ashkahn: So, it’s super fun. It’s a super fun time. If you’ve never been out before, obviously we recommend that you come out.
Graham: What are the dates this year? We just set them, right?
Ashkahn: The dates, yeah. So, August 18th and 19th-
Graham: I’m glad I didn’t say my dates I had in my head. I was wrong. I was wrong.
Ashkahn: Marchvember … August 18th and 19th, 2018 is the main conference, that’s a Saturday and Sunday. We also put on a workshop called the “How to Start a Float Center Workshop,” which, as you can imagine, is all about how to start a float center. That’s the two days beforehand, so that’s-
Graham: We’re not very good at coming up with clever names for things.
Ashkahn: No, it’s just very direct.
Graham: “Float Conference”, “How to Start a Center workshop”. Yeah.
Ashkahn: It’s a very just literal sort of thing. So, yeah. If you’re in the planning stages or thinking about opening up a center and you want a bunch of information, that’s the thing you want to come to. How to Start a Float Center workshop.
Then what’s becoming a bigger and more awesome part of the event every year is the Friday activities.
Graham: I thought you were gonna say the CPO training.
Ashkahn: That happen, they’re activities that happen on Friday. They go with our general theme of extremely blunt naming. Basically, people in the industry who are coming to the conference who want to organize their own little activity or event will put these on. So, we do a couple of them. We usually do a bus tour-
Graham: Beer bus tour.
Ashkahn: A beer, yeah, drinking-
Graham: Craft beer-
Ashkahn: Craft beer-
Graham: Double decker-
Ashkahn: Double decker bus tour.
Graham: Bus tour.
Ashkahn: It takes you around to the different float centers in Portland while you drink beer on the second story of a bus.
We put on a marketing forum last year, which was super fun. Had a bunch of panels from various float center owners talking about their marketing advice.
Then a bunch of people just put on all sorts of cool stuff, like maybe 10 to 20 independent-
Graham: Floatlympics this year, was one of my favorites.
Ashkahn: Community events. Yeah, the Floatlympics was very silly. So-
Graham: Salt bag tosses, and …
Ashkahn: That’s the day before the main Saturday/Sunday. So, that’s the Friday. Which is usually, I kind of consider it the start of the conference at this point. You come on that Friday morning, you do a whole day of activities, and then you start in on the main talks on Saturday.
Graham: We have a special program, too, where you can actually come and live in our float center for three months leading up to the conference and volunteer and help us out, and occasionally Ashkahn and I will actually let you come sleep in our rooms with us, and sort of have a little sleepover, braiding hair kind of thing.
Ashkahn: Have the scraps of our food.
Graham: That’s maybe once every two weeks, yeah.
So, if you’re interested in that, definitely reach out.
Ashkahn: Yeah. That’s it. It’s super fun. It’s super fun time.
Graham: Yeah. It’s really fun. Come on out and say hello. Let us give you big hugs.
Ashkahn: Yeah. Floatconference.com is the website. This is good. I think this was a very genuine question, and thanks for … I hope this information was a really tactical and pragmatic-
Graham: Yeah, and maybe now you’ll stop pestering us every day with all those emails asking us to cover this on the podcast, you know?
Ashkahn: Yeah.
Graham: If you have any more totally genuine, legitimate questions that are actually submitted by users, or you’re users. What are you guys again? Listeners?
Ashkahn: Submitters?
Graham: Sub, by you, submitted by you, go to floattanksolutions.com/podcast, enter them in, and yeah, we’ll talk to you tomorrow.
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Latest Blog Posts
The Float Tour Blog – Issue #28
Home sweet home! After so many months on the road, it was strange being back here in Portland. We were exhausted, excited, and a little travel weary. The first night back, I slept in my own bed for the first time in three months and the world just melted away.
Having travelled across the United States, I’m reminded of how insular Portland is. We are aggressively fixated on keeping things local. Local beer, ketchup, bikes, pet food, pillows, phone cases… it’s part of our charm. We want to reward people for living here and being a part of the community. It’s so pervasive that, after living here for so long, I kind of forgot that Secret Aardvark hot-sauce isn’t available everywhere, and that most cities don’t even recycle, let alone compost.
The Float Tour Blog – Issue #27
Our northern neighbor – a sister city, of sorts – Seattle is the largest metropolitan area in the Pacific Northwest. It’s the land of Microsoft and Kurt Cobain, and the culture here embraces both simultaneously. It’s tech business professional in the front and rock n’ roll grunge in the back. This blend creates a perfect storm of high energy business life and high energy nightlife, making relaxation a valuable commodity. Floating helps fill the void left by nightmarish traffic and overcrowded restaurants.
Given that it’s so close to home, the float centers in Seattle are a lot more familiar to us. Our visits here were more like a high school reunion than they were like the first day of school. During some of our visits, we were picking up conversations right where we left them.
The Float Tour Blog Issue #26
Vancouver is the largest metropolitan area in Canada, and third largest on the West Coast. It’s a major hub for international trade, with one of the largest ports in the world, giving it a large migrant population, mainly from Asia, the Middle East, and Australia. It’s also been a long-time home to the Canadian film industry, and has even been nicknamed “North Hollywood.” Dozens of film and television productions from major studios film here every year.
Vancouver is very much an international city. It has large boroughs dedicated to varying cultures, including one of the largest Chinatowns in the world. The society here is more receptive to new ideas, always looking for the next big thing; it’s not surprising that floating has blown up in Vancouver as much as it has.
In the last 3 years, 10 float centers have opened up, most of them being larger 4–6 tank centers. The really interesting thing is how they all opened within the same short amount of time about 1 ½ to 2 years ago, within months of each other.
The Float Tour Blog – Issue #25
We finally made it back to the West Coast! We went through the Canadian Rockies and were overwhelmed by the beauty of it all. We drove through hours and hours of winding mountain roads, fertile valleys, and tiny towns so picturesque they looked like movie sets. It was so captivating, in fact, I suspect Graham and Ashkahn may have secretly replaced themselves with robotic doppelgängers to hike throughout Banff.
This post will focus on the smaller communities in B.C. that are bringing floating to new people every day. We also get to visit Canadian manufacturer Pro Float. They’re relatively new to the scene, just opening up earlier this year – another exciting sign of the growth in the industry.
