Page Siplon, who as director of Georgia's Center of Innovation for Logistics built the Georgia Logistics Summit into one of the country's foremost logistics events, said today he is resigning to become CEO of Team One Logistics, which helps companies recruit and manage commercial truck drivers and other personnel.
Siplon starts at Team One on Jan. 15. He will relocate from Savannah to Alpharetta, Ga., a suburb north of Atlanta where Team One is based.
Siplon said he would remain involved in the final planning stages of this year's summit, to be held March 31 and April 1 in Atlanta. He will also serve as the event's master of ceremonies. Sandy Lake, associate director of the Center of Innovation for Logistics, will handle all of the center's efforts, Siplon said in a letter dated today.
In 2009, the first full-day summit attracted 450 attendees.* Last year, it hosted 2,200 attendees from 38 states and 11 nations, making it one of the largest logistics events in the U.S. Siplon said that attendance for this year's event is expected to approach 2,500. It cannot exceed that number because the main ballroom at the Georgia World Congress Center, the largest such ballroom in the state, cannot seat more than 2,500 people, he said.
Though the event is state-run, its agenda and activities were developed with significant input from the private sector. It is believed no other state runs a logistics event on such a large scale.
At the outset, Siplon shrewdly set the registration fee low in order to draw a critical mass of attendees. Initially, many of the attendees came from Georgia or from the Southeast. As attendance grew and the summit gained visibility, public and private sector executives from across the country and outside the U.S. sought to get involved.
Siplon was one of DC Velocity's 2012 Rainmakers. The Center of Innovation of Logistics is part of the Georgia Department of Economic Development.
Editor's note: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that the first year of the Georgia Logistics Summit was 2010. It also did not include the projections for this year's attendance.
