2026 TT&S Annual Conference & Vendor Showcase

The 2026 TT&S Annual Conference & Vendor Showcase took over the Bismarck Hotel from February 17-19. Attendees came from across the state and adjoining states for a mix of training from industry professionals.

Our registration table had new faces this year. The Bismarck-Mandan CVB is always helpful with providing assistance for check-in. In addition, this year TT&S decided to partner with a local food bank to support our communities throughout the state outside the normal broadband services. Because of their reach, we chose Great Plains Food Bank and welcomed Ashleigh Brown, the Community Engagement Coordinator, to assist us with collecting donations. Orange tickets were given out for each item for the food bank for an extra drawing. At the Wednesday social, one lucky winner was drawn for a $250 Visa gift card.

Tuesday Opening:

Our conference started with a brief opening by Seth Arndorfer, CEO of Dakota Carrier Network, introducing the keynote speaker, Brian D. Newby, Broadband Program Director of NDIT. Brian spoke about partnering with North Dakota’s carriers on delivering last-mile broadband to 100% of all North Dakotans. All employees of broadband cooperatives within the state are affected by what happens with federal grants and he presented that to our attendees.

After the keynote, long-time networking trainer Andrew Walding explained a new contest for this year, a Wireshark "Capture the Flag" contest that he set up and would be monitoring through the day Wednesday. Participants were given a brief overview of how the contest would run.

Afterwards, it was off to the Tuesday social for drinks, appetizers, socializing with vendors...

And prizes! We were inundated with door prizes. TT&S provides many, but we're immensely grateful to our exhibitors and sponsors who support the fun with their own giveaways, from branded items to gift cards. To make it easier to know what numbers were drawn, this year we had a projector and screen to display numbers.

Wednesday prizes were just as many as Tuesday. Attendees who didn't claim their prize within a reasonable time missed out.  At the end of each social, we gave away a high-quality cooler, a Yeti on Tuesday and a YKO (see in picture) on Wednesday.

Wednesday Breakout Sessions:

Wednesday is always the busiest day of the conference. It started out with a breakfast buffet and two-hour sessions in all the rooms. Those sessions included some new topics - project management, Ubiquiti, and access control. Returning with the XGS PON and OTDR session from last year were Calix and Viavi representatives. These two-hour sessions packed a lot of information first thing in the morning. 

For managers and office staff, we brought Lisa Parry back with new topics for all levels of employees for workplace skills from leadership to staying positive in the face of challenges. She is an engaging speaker with experience and anecdotes applicable to many situations in the workplace.

Technicians had a great range of sessions to advance their skills continuing throughout the day. Sean Kelly of Light Brigade, our fiber optics training partner, talked about air-blown fiber. NISC hosted sessions on the latest features of Appsuite and iVue Connect. And Ryan Schmaltz from ND One Call returned after several years away from our conference. Attendees packed into the room to learn the latest of what excavators and utilities need to know.

Sometimes things go wrong, but we try to be prepared. Various issues sometimes come up, whether due to personal, weather, or technical issues, and we're always grateful when another vendor is available to step into those places. We had one last minute change in the morning sessions but had a fill-in ready of Matt Kautter of Precision Group. Due to technical issues, we replaced a fiber session with Matt's session on Lithium Ion vs. Lead Acid Batteries.

This year, AI continues to be a hot topic. It has changed the way we work, and people want to learn more about the tools available. Faith Harron presented twice on her topic of AI in the workplace. We also had Dr. Terry Pilling from the University of Mary present a session on how AI learns. This provided an insight into understanding why AI works the way it does.

Andrew Walding of Cellstream, one of our training partners, is always a popular presenter. This year, we kept him busy. He started with a network troubleshooting fundamentals workshop on Tuesday before the conference. On Wednesday, aside from his Wireshark Capture the Flag contest, he presented for a group of high school students, then held two sessions in the afternoon for technicians, one on troubleshooting Wi-Fi networks and the other on speed tests. He closed out the day at the social announcing the winners of the Capture the Flag contest, who each took home recognition medals and technology prizes (1st and 2nd place winners seen in the picture).

Other sessions in the afternoon included new faces and old. Andrew Degidio of Sumitomo Electric hosted a session in the Dakota Ballroom on ribbon fiber after finishing with his hands-on fiber with the students. Across the hotel, sessions included locating from Jack Rupp with Ditch Witch of ND, a fiber session with Justin Foth of Clearfield, and cybersecurity with Kyle Emmel and Ariel Jablonow of NDIT.

Ending the day on a fun note... Our Wednesday social included our third annual cornhole tournament, which attracted 15 mixed teams. Many were partnered with coworkers, but two of the teams included vendor representatives. Our official referee, Jeff Tweten, was on hand to prep everyone and monitor the contest, which ran smoothly. A fun time was had by all and the winners took home trophies and bag sets.

Student Mini-Conference:

Aside from the main conference, the Connecting the World: Introduction to the Broadband Industry Mini-Conference for Students ran throughout Wednesday, despite some of the out-of-town students not traveling due to bad weather that blew in Tuesday night into Wednesday early morning. A few students and chaperones from out of town managed to make it, but most of the students were local Bismarck Career Academy and Technical Center students.

Students started with a presentation from Andrew Walding explaining how information travels across the internet and then experienced hands-on fiber optics at three stations hosted by Jeff Harmon of Viavi, Andrew Degidio of Sumitomo Electric, and Sean Kelly of Light Brigade. At the end of the day, students had the option to travel across town for a tour of the Dakota Carrier Network building before heading home.

Students left with new knowledge about the different types of work in the industry and gift bags with swag and information packets about working at our many member companies throughout the state.

Thursday Closing:

On Thursday morning, attendees were treated to a breakfast burrito buffet and sat through closing sessions on safety. If you thought safety was boring, you haven't heard these two ladies speak! 

We couldn't have planned the closing better given the rain and snow that had come in during the conference than we did with Lt. Jenna Clawson Huibregtse of the ND Highway Patrol speaking about safe driving. It was an eye-opening and engaging presentation.

Following her was Dawn Chisholm, a wife and mother who lost her first husband due to a grain-bin accident that could have been prevented "If Only" a few safety precautions had been taken. Her story packed a punch that left barely a dry eye in the room.

TT&S is focused on keeping our member company employees safe. It's our hope that these closing presentations left attendees more aware of their actions and the lasting effects their decisions can have.

The 2026 TT&S Annual Conference & Vendor Showcase was another great event. We'd like to thank everyone who contributed and participated and look forward to seeing you next year!

Quick Guide: What to do after an incident

 

We spend a lot of time in the safety world finding ways to prevent incidents. We try to anticipate them, categorize them in degrees of potential severity, and control for them. Focus on prevention is very important, but it means that training on what to do immediately after an incident can sometimes be missed. While those first few steps might seem common sense, it can seem less that way when you're actually facing a situation. There may be a lot of moving pieces, adrenaline, and concern for someone who may be injured. Let's break this all down in order of what you should do and when.

1.  Deal with any immediate hazards - making sure that whatever caused the incident is not going to immediately be a hazard for anyone else. This means taking quick steps to rectify the situation, including evacuating an area if that makes sense and securing it so no one else enters.

2. Administer first aid. If you're dealing with an injury, follow first aid protocol. OSHA states that you must have a first aid plan in place. If you're extremely close to a healthcare facility, that could maybe mean relying on their support, but for most employers that will mean making sure enough employees have first aid training to cover any emergencies.

3. Involve more healthcare professionals as necessary. Does the person require a 911 call and ambulance transportation? Again, it's important to rely on your employees' first aid training, which will include how to assess a situation like this. Also, if you already have a relationship with an occupational health provider, they may offer more resources to assist.

 4. Once these steps are taken, make sure to document the scene as soon and thoroughly as possible. Pictures, videos, and interviews of those who witnessed the event are all important. Documentation is described more deeply in TT&S' Incident Investigations training, so feel free to reach out if you would like more resources. Make sure the scene is preserved as well in case a more thorough investigation is required.

 5. Determine whether you will need to report the incident to authorities, such as OSHA or the EPA, as well as your worker's compensation insurance.

6. If a major incident has occurred, consider retaining legal counsel. This is a step that not only protects the company, but also any involved individuals.

-------- The following steps are not immediate and are longer-term 

7. If you will be supporting an individual coming back to work after an injury, work closely with the individual and your worker's compensation insurer, who may provide a case manager. Consider ways to accommodate their recovery beyond what is required by their healthcare team.

8. If you are able to continue on with a simple internal investigation (for less severe incidents), use the documentation gathered after the incident to conduct an investigation. Your goal is to uncover the root cause(s) of the incident, and to do so in a way where no employees feel they are being blamed for the incident.

9. Have a plan for whatever action items come up as a result of the investigation. Make sure someone is tracking whether these action items are completed, and that they are all assigned to a specific person or team.

10. Consider the best way to communicate with the rest of the company about the incident. You can craft an overarching plan for how incidents will be communicated to employees, or looser guidelines that allow some case-by-case flexibility. Consider issues like respecting involved employees' privacy, how to not point fingers after an incident, and ways to communicate what changes are taking place to prevent a repeat incident.

There's a lot of other considerations embedded in these steps, but these are a great start. Consider holding a team training for managers or even an all hands training so expectations are clear on what to do after an incident. We hope it never comes in handy, but we can hope you will be prepared if it does. 

Happy Holidays from Technical Training & Safety

We're so excited to have spent another year partnering with our member companies to keep your employees safe and provide them with training opportunities. We hope you can take this time to catch a breath and enjoy time with friends and family before the rush of the new year begins.

2026 TT&S Annual Conference & Vendor Showcase COMING SOON!

Mark Your Calendar!

It's coming! The next TT&S Annual Conference & Vendor Showcase takes place on February 17-19, 2026, at the Bismarck Hotel & Conference Center.

We've finished the schedule. Although a couple of small details are still in the works, the conference schedule and session information are now available on the TT&S website. Links to the schedule and session descriptions are here:

Full Schedule

Session Descriptions

 

CONFERENCE AGENDA

Tuesday Opening and Keynote: February 17 @ 3 pm

INTRODUCTION by Seth Arndorfer, CEO of Dakota Carrier Network

KEYNOTE:  Brian D. Newby, Broadband Program Director of NDIT; joined by Brian Nybakken, Broadband Program Manager of NDIT.

Brian will open the event with an update on broadband grants activity over the last 3 three years, the Capital Project Funds projects awarded, how close they are to completion, the zigs and zags of Broadband Equity Access and Deployment (BEAD) funding, where BEAD projects stand now, and an estimate of when North Dakota willfly the banner for being the first state in the country with 100 percent high-speed broadband coverage to all locations.

Wednesday Breakout Sessions:

We have a great schedule of new and needed topics from a variety of presenters who are experts with their niche in the broadband world. Many are training instructors willing to schedule full workshops if you need more than our breakout sessions allow. New topics for 2026 include sessions on Ubiquiti, Access Control, and AI. Fiber optics topics include ribbon fiber, Futurepath MicroDuct, and air blown fiber. NISC will provide sessions to reveal new features in Appsuite and their Broadband iVUE Connect software. Networking instructor Andrew Walding is back with sessions on troubleshooting Wi-Fi networks and addressing speed tests.

For office workers in our broadband companies, we also provide a variety of educational topics. These range from AI in the workplace and project management to customer service and workplace courtesy.

Other topics include advanced locating, XGS PON & OTDR, and cybersecurity. Please visit our website to view all scheduled sessions and session descriptions.

Thursday Closing Sessions:

After breakfast on Thursday, the North Dakota Highway Patrol will talk about driving safely. When they're done, ND native Dawn Chisholm will talk about the accident that took her husband, a warning to everyone to stay safe in everything they do in life and not live with the regret of "If Only..."

CONTESTS AND PRIZES

For a few years now, TT&S has hosted contests to liven up the conference socials. This year, we're changing things up a little bit with a contest from Andrew Walding of Cellstream for the technical people in the broadband industry, requiring a laptop to "Capture the Flag" using Wireshark packet analysis. The top three will receive prizes for their efforts, so bring your laptop and be ready to do some network sleuthing!

And for the fourth year, we will continue the Cornhole Tournament with trophies and prizes for the winning teams. Last year, we gave away our old boards with our old Telecom Training & Safety logo. This year, teams will be playing on new boards with our new logo. We're ready for you to register your teams for fun and bragging rights!

REGISTRATION & EARLY BIRD DEADLINE

Registration is open for exhibitors and sponsors as well as attendees. The announcement emails have gone out with a sampling of our packed schedule of sessions, socials, and more. Early bird pricing for attendees cuts off on January 16, 2026. Save $50 by registering early!

Exhibitors can find more details on the Exhibitor and Sponsor information page.

After you've registered, be sure to set up your profile in the Event Access area of the website. If you don't already have an account on the ttsafety.com website, you'll need to set up a login and password and wait for approval before you can do this. Instructions can be downloaded from our website by clicking here.

EXHIBITORS AND SPONSORS 

Thank you to the exhibitors who have registered already. These are listed at https://www.ttsafety.com/annual-conference/exhibitors-sponsors/. More will be added as they register!

Halloween Safety: How to stay both safe and spooky

The day is almost here! For those who have a little spooky in their hearts or just long for the day's sweet treats, Halloween is a day to anticipate.

However, did you know that children are twice as likely to be fatally injured by a car on Halloween than on any other day of the year?

There's no need to stop the fun to prevent these incidents, though. Here are some tips from safekids.org on how to stay both spooky and safe on Halloween:

• Carry glow sticks or flashlights, use reflective tape or stickers on costumes and bags, and wear light colors to help kids see and be seen by drivers.
• Join kids under age 12 for trick-or-treating.
• Slow down and be alert! Kids are excited on Halloween and may dart into the street. 
• Turn on headlights early in the day to spot kids from further away.
• Remind kids to cross the street at corners or crosswalks.
• When selecting a costume, make sure it is the right size to prevent trips and falls. Choose face paint over masks when possible. Masks can limit children’s vision.

As we lose more visibility this time of year in the mornings as well, be extra cautious in school zones. In Bismarck just this week we just had a high school student struck by a car at a cross walk during low light conditions at the start of the day. A little vigilance and slowing down can help prevent incidents like these, especially when it's harder to see this time of year.

So don't forget to slow down and have a fun and safe Halloween this year!

 

Student Day

Last week TT&S had the fantastic opportunity to coordinate with DCN, NISC, and Light Brigade to educate students throughout the state on what the broadband world is all about.

Approached by technology teacher Lee Gullingsrud, all organizations worked together to provide students with a hands-on demonstration of fiber splicing and OTDR use, a tour of DCN, and an overview of NISC with equipment demonstration.

Thanks to all who came together to make this event possible! TT&S was thrilled to play a part, and we hope to help provide more students with exposure to the broadband industry in the future.

 

2024 Top Ten OSHA Violations

The numbers are in -- OSHA's top ten violations for 2024 are available. Amazingly, these violations rarely change. Fall protection tops the list for the fifteenth year in a row. The rest tend to shift around the top spots.

If you're just starting out taking safety a little more seriously, seeing how many of these hazards might apply to your company is a great start.

1. Fall Protection – General Requirements (1926.501): 5,914 violations
2. Hazard Communication (1910.1200): 2,546
3. Ladders (1926.1053): 2,405
4. Lockout/Tagout (1910.147): 2,177
5. Respiratory Protection (1910.134): 1,953
6. Fall Protection – Training Requirements (1926.503): 1,907
7. Scaffolding (1926.451): 1,905
8. Powered Industrial Trucks (1910.178): 1,826
9. Personal Protective and Lifesaving Equipment – Eye and Face Protection (1926.102): 1,665
10. Machine Guarding (1910.212): 1,239

 If you have any questions at all, please feel free to reach out to TT&S. 

Rerun: Safe Driving Around School Buses

This is an oldie but a goodie -- Check out our post about safe driving around school buses. We might have missed the boat a little with back to school, but it's still fresh in our minds.

 

 

Measuring your Company's Safety Performance: Part 2, Leading and Lagging Indicators

Last blog post we discussed how a popular mainstay of measuring safety effectiveness isn't all it's cracked up to be. Incident rates, longtime make-or-break measure for how your safety program is doing... don't do what we've long thought they do.

So what now?

Safety has long suffered from a data problem. As more of the world moves into gathering and analyzing data, the traditional way of measuring data in safety means there is less data available.

Think about it -- the safer your company becomes, the less incidents happen (which, obviously, is great!), and then the less information you have about what might go wrong.

As time goes on, you can become blind to risks that might be bubbling under the surface. New risks that you haven't recognized yet, and older risks that may be increasing again.

This is scary but manageable. The solution isn't to throw up our hands and give up: we just have to be smarter about what data we measure.

The more traditional way of data gathering in safety is called "lagging indicators." This is because we measure something after the fact. Common lagging indicators include:

 

- The big baddie we already talked about: Incident rates

- Worker's compensation number of claims and costs

- Fines from regulatory agencies (OSHA, etc)

- Lost workdays

- Property damage costs 

 

There is nothing wrong with measuring these, but it is important to recognize their limitations. These are all "rear view mirror" perspectives. Once you've addressed the root cause of the kinds of incidents you are seeing, there will be less of this type of data available. Congratulations, you're moving toward safety success! But, unfortunately, your work is not done.

The next phase is managing those risks that you don't necessarily see. You need a "forward view." This can be provided by intelligently measuring what are called "leading indicators." Most of these relate to measuring proactive actions taken toward identifying risks and preventing incidents. While you will never know for sure that you've prevented a specific incident, this data will show how proactive your company is being in reducing your risk. 

 

Some examples of leading indicators include:

- Rate of incident investigations closed vs. open

- Rate of action items identified during incident investigations closed vs. open

- Rate of safety inspections completed on time 

- Rate of employee attendance at safety trainings

- Number of toolbox talks completed 

- Number of job safety analyses (JSA's) completed

- Number of risk assessments completed

- Number of near misses reported (while near misses themselves are lagging indicators, the fact that employees report them are leading indicators!)

- Rate of equipment inspections completed as required

 

Measuring this data opens up several important possibilities. First, it gives you an opportunity to assign SMART annual safety goals to employees, if your employees already have annual performance management goals. These goals are in their control, as they are not tied to incident rates. Did they attend all assigned safety meetings? Did they complete their equipment inspections in the correct timeframe? This gives employees ownership of the safety program as well.

Second, this data is invaluable to help with that "forward view." While we cannot ever know the future, these measurements help defray those unknown risks by demonstrating that your company is proactive.

Third, this is a great source of data if you ever do come under investigation by a regulatory agency. You can absolutely show all the proactive actions taken by your company in an attempt to make your company safer.

You don't need to start out measuring each leading indicator above -- why not pick a couple for this next year and start there? The constellation of leading indicators you choose must make sense to you as a company.

If you have any questions at all, reach out to TT&S for consultation on what type of indicators might make the most sense for your company to measure. 

 

 

Measuring your Company's Safety Performance: Part 1, the incident rate

 

Have you ever considered ways to measure your safety program for effectiveness?

Many companies decide to use their incident rate as a safety measuring stick. After all, it's a metric commonly used in contractor vetting processes, and it's reported in the aggregate by industry under the Bureau of Labor Services (BLS). Must be a good thing right?

Well... this is one of those cases where the 'official' metric is not the best fit, especially for smaller companies. Turns out, your incident rate is statistically invalid unless you happen to be calculating with millions of work hours. Check out this quote from the April 2021 Professional Safety Journal: 

"Unless hundreds of millions of work hours are amassed, the confidence bands are so wide that TRIR [incident rate] cannot be accurately reported to even one decimal point. The implication is that the TRIR for almost all companies is virtually meaningless because they do not accumulate enough work hours." (https://www.eei.org/-/media/Project/EEI/Documents/Issues-and-Policy/Power-to-Prevent-SIF/PSJ---TRIR-Paper.pdf)

This whole article is pretty down about incident rates in general. First, they do not predict or show any correlation with fatalities, which means that companies with higher incident rates are no more likely to have a fatality than a company with a lower incident rate. This is a topic of active study in the safety world, as it's becoming more apparent that the strategies to prevent lower-impact incidents are not always the same ones that are helpful in preventing higher-impact incidents, such as fatalities.

Further, incident rates are sometimes embedded into performance management systems for employees. For many companies, it is a requirement that one annual goal for each employee be safety-related. This is a good step in general, but incident rates have a way of sneaking into these goals. For frontline employees, this can mean "no incidents or near misses," which discourages honest reporting, and for managers the goal is often "an improved incident rate." However, as the article discusses, the improved incident rate is subject to random variation much of the time.

The article also says that incident rates are not helpful in gauging program effectiveness over the short-term. It might be easy to infer that because your incident rate went down over a couple years, you must be doing something right. Incident rates are popular measures for current safety initiatives for companies for this reason. However, as the article discusses, incident rates are not useful for evaluation unless there's 100 months of data -- that's over eight years. There's no room for gauging shorter-term initiatives if that's the case.

Well... what now?

Over the next couple of weeks we'll be discussing better strategies to measure your safety program. If you want to get a leg up, you can go ahead and search up "leading and lagging indicators" -- but it's a wild world out there, with lots of information. We're hoping we can break it down into manageable pieces for our member companies in the next few posts.