Upcoming events and conferences are always exciting for the industry. But next week's Inside Self-Storage World Expo in Tacoma, Wash. (Oct. 4-6), is especially important for Self-Storage Talk, the industry's largest online community. SST, the official forum of Inside Self-Storage, will play a notable role in the three-day event's agenda, and the gathering will provide an opportunity for many industry pros (and SST members) to catch up or be introduced for the first time.

SST will have a booth in the exhibit hall, directly next to the ISS booth. Yours truly will be manning the SST booth, greeting members, introducing non-members to the site, giving virtual tours and encouraging people to sign up. Additionally, the SST booth will feature maps of the United States, Canada and the world for members to place a pin where they're from. If you'll be attending, please stop by and say hello.

Some prominent forum contributors are speaking, as well. Gina Six Kudo (Gina6k on SST), general manager of Cochrane Road Self Storage in Morgan Hill, Calif., will be speaking at in the Facility Marketing and Sales track, presenting "Social-Media Marketing for the Faint of Heart" at 10-10:50 a.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 4. Robert Madsen (Madman on SST), president of the U-Lock Mini Storage Group in British Columbia, Canada, will present "Market to Market: An Exploratory Discussion of U.S. and Canadian Self-Storage and How Operators Can Learn From Both Sides" in the Canadian Exclusive track at the same time. In addition, SST "elder statesmen" and ISS Expo regular speakers Jim Chiswell of Chiswell and Associates and Mel Holsinger of Professional Self-Storage Management will lead Tuesday afternoon's Q&A session at 4 p.m. (The entire agenda is available here. Several more occasional SST users will be speaking.) The Q&A is really an in-person manifestation of what SST is all the time: a consortium of free-flowing questions and answers among industry peers.

Finally, SST will one of the social media outlets attendees and non-attendees can use to follow what's going on at the show. A running thread in the ISS Expo forum will contain updates and posts from attendees, and it's also the place to visit this week if you have any last-minute questions. On Twitter, conversation about the show will contain the hashtag #issworld, so please use this before, after and during the show if you would like to tweet about what's going on. You can also follow the ISS Twitter feed: @selfstoragemag. To get in on the SST action before Tacoma, visit http://www.selfstoragetalk.com/register.php to get your free username. You can also wait until the show and sign up personally with me at the SST booth.

If you're attending, I'm looking forward to seeing you, and if not, I hope to engage with you on SST.