After celebrating the 25th iteration of the Tilt-Up Convention and Expo last year, we’ve taken some time to reflect. That milestone invited not just a look back, but a challenge: how can we evolve this event to better reflect the values we so often talk about—community, innovation, and especially, collaboration?

At our convention in Phoenix, we were proud to offer a robust program—sometimes five tracks of education happening at once. But I remember walking into that environment and feeling something unexpected. Engineers filed into their session, field leaders into theirs, project managers elsewhere. We divided by discipline. It worked well in many ways, but in that moment, we may have missed an opportunity to learn from one another.

This year, we’re doing something different—not as a reaction, but as a thoughtful response to the space, the moment, and what our community needs right now. The Music City Center in Nashville gives us a new kind of canvas, and we’re using it to explore a new kind of program.

Striking Harmony, our 2025 theme, speaks to the idea that the best outcomes arise when distinct voices—whether musical or professional—are brought together with intention. It’s about moving beyond parallel tracks and toward shared conversations. Collaboration is not simply working alongside one another; it’s actively learning from each other, challenging assumptions, and discovering what’s possible when roles intersect.

In Nashville, that vision comes to life in a reimagined education format: eight highly curated, team-based sessions that bring together general contractors, concrete subcontractors, engineers, architects, developers, and suppliers to present real project stories. These aren’t case studies in the traditional sense—they are stories of tension, ingenuity, problem-solving, and, most of all, exchange. Each session concludes with a panel discussion that pushes the conversation further, asking how collaboration was defined, where it fell short, and what it made possible.

We may return to multi-track programming in the future. It has real value. But this year, we’re creating space for something different—something we hope will move the needle on what collaboration really means in our industry.

Let’s not just talk about community. Let’s demonstrate it.

I look forward to seeing you in Nashville.