Under the Mirrorball: WCS 2025

The Western Coatings Symposium and Show is organized by the Los Angeles, Pacific Northwest, Golden Gate and Arizona Societies for Coatings Technology — four groups whose shared mission is education, networking and scholarship. PCI was fortunate to attend the biennial event last month at the Paris Las Vegas Hotel & Convention Center.

Credit: Courtney Bassett

Boogie Shoes on the Roof
The week officially kicked off at Drai’s rooftop nightclub at the Cromwell with this year’s welcome reception, sponsored by Azelis. The show promoted an era known for “neon leg warmers and questionable hair choices.” Nonetheless, “the disco era represents an era of boundless energy, groundbreaking music and iconic fashion.” And, boy, did the coatings industry understand the assignment (see the infamous Sam Morell pictured here with PCI staff). With a literal disco-ball backdrop, it was the perfect setting to watch the coatings community reconnect.

Credit: Courtney Bassett

From the Dance Floor to the Podium: WCS Headliners
Dow’s Senior Global R&D/TS&D Director Tracy Young kicked off the event Monday morning with a keynote centered on balancing performance, sustainability and affordability. She emphasized the importance of tying innovation to regulatory realities and consumer expectations. Her remarks underscored continued progress on safer materials, bio-based integration and tools that help accelerate formulation work. Echoing much of the content we’ve published over the past year, another key concept was functionality. She stressed that a coating’s success can no longer rely only on the “it looks good” evaluation. Functionality is important.

Credit: Kristin Johansson

Tuesday’s keynote address from Albert Invent CEO Nick Talken stepped through how AI and digitalization are reshaping R&D workflows, a topic that continues to be front and center at our industry’s events. Talken mentioned that his job is “selling change every day,” which stuck with me. We often talk about the evolving landscape of this and any industry, so it’s fascinating to hear how some companies have made a business out of tackling the future head on. The presentation covered topics ranging from structured data and lab automation to AI-supported customer and supply chain experiences. He spent time on case studies, including Henkel’s global R&D platform work. Henkel’s example showed what ‘one digital roof’ looks like in reality: a single platform tying together more than 3,000 scientists and engineers across 100+ labs in 41 countries. The system has already cleaned and structured 10.5 million data points and indexed 225,000 products across 170 technologies, giving teams shared context for reuse and faster iteration.

Mirrorball Moment
The WCS Samson-Adler Distinguished Service Award celebrates individuals who’ve given outstanding service to the societies and the broader industry. This year’s program recognized John Gilbert. Gilbert joined Behr in 2007 and led R&D in the United States and India until his retirement in 2025. Earlier in his career he spent 22 years with BASF’s automotive coatings group, including a Germany assignment from 1990 to 1992, working across ED coats, primers, basecoats and clearcoats. It was a reminder that so many industry titans have been committed to coatings since the beginning of their careers.

The Set List
There were five concurrent tracks of technical content running throughout the week.One of the week’s highlights was the leadership panel “Agility in Action: How Industry Leaders Succeed in Today’s Dynamic Coatings World,” bringing perspectives from Azelis, BASF, Behr, Cloverdale, Dow, Turk International and Dunn-Edwards. Moderator Chris Dugan kept the conversation moving through supply chain resilience, talent and regulatory momentum. I admired and applaud the panelists for their honest answers; it lightened the mood and allowed laughs to echo through the conversation as they brainstormed how to make their industry attractive to the next generation.

Tabletop Tracks
The exhibit hall featured over 100 tabletops. I had the opportunity to sit down with many companies to learn about their new or existing technologies. I met with Tolsa’s Paints, Coatings and Construction Additives Product Manager Alberto Fernández-Ibarburu and we dug into his talk on a new generation of natural, “earthy” rheology modifiers for waterborne coatings — organically modified clays aimed at stable, easy-to-apply systems. We also talked through Tolsa’s technology for intumescent and fire-protective coatings.

PCI's Courtney Bassett with Tolsa's Alberto Fernández-Ibarburu. Credit: Tolsa 

I stopped by Orion to talk to Marketing Manager for Coatings & Printing Systems Zach Hayes about their sustainability push in carbon black using recycled or renewable feedstocks and circular concepts, paired with the need to maintain color and dispersion performance across multiple coating systems.

I also caught up with Arkema’s Global Communication and Digital Manager of Coating Resins Alicia W. Albrecht and Technical Director, Liquid Coatings, Coating Resins John Blythe, Ph.D. While their presence this year was more about connecting across the value chain than a single product launch, our conversation kept circling back to built-environment durability, PFAS-free solutions and collaboration.

Debut on the Strip
This was my first time in Las Vegas, and I was lucky to squeeze in two “only-in-Vegas” experiences. The Wizard of Oz at Sphere is an immersive, multisensory trip. The experience featured wind, fog and that “yellow brick road” perspective that wraps overhead. As someone who once wore ruby slippers daily from age 3 to 6, I couldn’t resist, and I highly recommend it. I also hopped in a Zoox robotaxi, a completely driverless rideshare pilot, currently only in Vegas. The ride offered a small glimpse of how autonomy may change how we navigate big events like WCS in the future.

Credit: Courtney Bassett

Credit: Courtney Bassett

Encore Into 2026
As we close out 2025, the takeaway I’m carrying into 2026 is to continue to be thoughtful with our decisions, regardless of how minor, mirroring how I see the coatings industry stakeholders tackling the new horizon of opportunities and challenges ahead.