This past weekend, I was contacted by a former colleague of mine from Honeywell. He reminded me of a conversation we had had a number of years ago about the value of trade shows.

He wrote that over the years he has learned that a trade show was “a place where we could interact with customers and sell them on the benefits of products.” My correspondent continued about “how everything tied together to accomplish that objective….” Read More...

TSEA’s annual TS2 event opens in Chicago today. If you are an exhibit manager and you haven’t heard of this organization, take a look at the reports from The Windy City and consider keeping up with these folks.

The Trade Show Exhibitor’s Association has been around for years and was my first exposure to a group doing what I did. Being a 3D communicator in an internal marketing communications group led by 2D people made me a bit of the odd guy out. However, when I went to my first Trade Show for Trade Shows (TS2) years ago, I found myself among my own kind and feeling like less of an island. Read More...

January has always been a big month for trade shows. Going back in my career, we had a number of shows that kicked off the year in a variety of industries. Now that I think about it, several industries anchor their years with January shows.

The National Retail Federation (NRF) is always at Jacob Javits convention center in New York City the first few weeks of January. This show started small (before moving to the big hall, it was held in hotel ballrooms and consisted of tabletops and portables) but has grown as retail has grown and changed. A large number of the anchor exhibitors are technology companies (Fujitsu, IBM, NCR, Motorola-Symbol, Oracle) as retail has become dependent on technology to target and find and define an ever-dwindling customer base. Read More...