This is the first post from my phone. Not sure how it will work out. Happening right now is the Hong Kong Institution of Engineers International Conference on Solid Waste. Your correspondent is not attending due to the US$450 entry price. They have a student rate, set at the low low price of $200. I don’t know how many students are interested in waste, have a spare $200, and enough spare time to go to a conference during finals week. I discovered this event during my search for universities with plasma gasification research programs from which I could recruit.

I happened upon this letter from Westinghouse, which is in response to a letter by professor Jonathan Wong at Hong Kong Baptist University. Professor Wong invited Westinghouse to display their arc plasma technology at an upcoming conference, which Westinghouse declined. I assumed the conference in question was the BEC EnviroSeries Conference 2013 (mentioned below), I emailed Professor Wong and asked to meet, as it appears he supports plasma gasification technology and therefore should be very excited to discover a startup working on such a technology right here in Hong Kong! He replied saying that I could find him at the conference. I replied, but Professor Wong did not.

I have already signed up for the other (more affordable) waste conference set for 2 weeks from now (BEC). Isn’t it interesting that Hong Kong has two waste management conferences in the same month? Both conferences are dominated by the big firms and academics, no mention of startup technologies that I can see.