Surely it’s now time to dispel the myth that the internet will kill off trade shows. The organisers of Embedded World announced this year’s event was the most successful in the history of the show, with 22,262 trade visitors (up 17% on last year) and 872 exhibitors (9% more than 2011). Without doubt the show was well attended, and even with the new, more spacious layout the gangways were crowded. The student day attracted over 1000 students, but this didn’t turn into the “freebie fest” seen at other events that encourage student attendance: in fact the Thursday remained busy with trade visitors and most of our clients said they met some great potential customers on this day.
So congratulations to the organisers of the event: it was clearly a success. There is just one thing I’d ask for next year: please do a better job of looking after the journalists! They promote the event, and are a major factor in the show’s success, so don’t make them walk miles from the U-Bahn to the press office, make sure that there is enough food at lunchtime, and please sort out the differences you have with publishers so all the major German electronics titles are properly represented at the event.
You are right, it was a success, and there was a really good buzz. But it was in Germany. Except for the Asia, conferences are continuing to decline.
On the wy the press was treated, as a sore footed hack, I can only whole- heartedly agree. There was a shuttle bus from the U-bahn to the entrance near the press room, but this wasn’t mentioned anywhere beforehand. There was one poster near the wrong entrance, which was easy to miss.
The food is a real pain, has been for years, and it seems once again that some of the organising staff saw the food in the press room as their perk. If a reader thinks this is just whinging, most hacks have almost back to back meetings, and may schedule half an hour to eat, check email, and rest feet and minds. With no food in the press room, queing for even a roll can take 15 minutes out of that half an hour.
But these whinges are trivial compared to idiocy of organising back to back press conferences at different ends of a conference complex that can easily take ten minutes to navigate. It was even worse when we got back to the main press conference room, near the press centre, after the reverse trek, to find it had been empty for the last hour.
Dear Mike,
you are so right that the organizer should take a better job for the journalists. All what you have mentioned does bother us however, what it bothered me the most was the worst WiFi access I’ve ever seen. Using one of the smart phones it should be one-time job to login to WiFi access (like I have even at home). But at the fair we had to login many times due to a very poor WiFi signal across halls (every time typing combination of letters/numbers…). Next day I was surprised that login data was not valid any more.
And one more thing to add: when parking at the VIP West parking place I knew that there is a man to give access to the parking so I have put my BIG yellow Press identification to a visible place so that he can see it from miles. Guess what – he started to ask me who I am, do I have a press pass etc. Finally I have pointed out the BIG yellow Press identification and read the small print on it and eventually he opened the gate to the parking place. It seemed to me that employees do not know what kind of passes are possible on the fair.
Jure
forgot about the wifi – for some reason I, and several others could not connect. However at least there were some broadband connections in the press room, and once you had waited the three to four minutes to be recognised there was a nice fat feed.