It’s been a couple weeks since InfoComm 2012 and by all accounts, this year’s event was one of the most successful shows that organization has presented in recent memory. (Note: For highlights and insights on InfoComm 2012, CLICK HERE). Attendance was up, there was no shortage of new technology, new tools and new toys to check out, and the vibe among attendees — both exhibitors and visitors — was uncompromisingly positive. All of the above are good signs that bode well for the overall health of the industry.
It was a great party, yet something was missing. It’s been five years since the NSCA show merged with InfoComm, and I’m not here to second-guess that decision. In fact, there were — and still are — many good reasons for that, among them being not having two rivaling tradeshows a couple months apart, and the convenience of “seeing it all” for integrators that do business in both audio and display technologies. But when a tradeshow gets really big — à la NAB or NAMM — I’m not really even sure the “try to see it all” approach even holds true, and I think that InfoComm is falling into that same category. For me, even three days at InfoComm wasn’t enough time to see everyone I wanted to visit, and I was only dealing with audio companies, and that was after I scratched most of the nurse call, residential intercom and ceiling speaker vendors off my list.
The other downside of a mega-tradeshow is that when you have a huge number of exhibitors to accommodate, the list of locales that can host the tradeshow becomes pretty limited. InfoComm 2012 had nearly 1,000 exhibitors, and required nearly a half-million square feet of exhibit and event space — meeting/demo rooms, etc. On the other side, the availability of hotel rooms becomes another issue. Just how many towns can host 34,000 visitors for InfoComm or nearly 100,000 for NAB or Winter NAMM?
A mega-tradeshow means writing off the old NSCA approach of holding the event in different regions, so some of the quaintness of going to secondary markets — like ex-NSCA Expo cities Denver, St. Louis, Reno, Dallas, Charlotte and Nashville — becomes a distant memory.
Perhaps it’s just a nostalgic desire to return to the “old” days — whatever they were — but certainly a wish for the era of the smaller, more intimate trade shows isn’t necessarily a bad thing. There were times when it seemed you could run into at least three-fourths of the convention attendees in the hotel lobby (especially when an entire show took place in one hotel, like the AES shows at the NY Hilton). Maybe it’s that sense of face-to-face community that I miss most, which doesn’t occur when everyone is shuffled off onto a dozen shuttle bus routes and scores of taxis at the end of the day.
I suppose we could simply substitute Facebook messaging for face-to-face meetings, and some have proposed virtual online tradeshows in lieu of enduring air travel and lumpy hotel mattresses to experience the genuine article. If nothing else, the travel experience creates a bond between us all. We can all relate to sharing tales about missed flights, lost luggage, lost reservations, and so on, to supply a bit of friendly small talk before entering the discussions — whether it’s business negotiations or technical discourse about enclosure design, port geometry, crossover slopes, phase plugs and driver matching/selection. (Sorry, but after spending days at InfoComm immersed in listening to and hearing about speakers, and then editing Phil Graham’s excellent article on “Understanding Crossovers” in this month’s issue, I guess I had transducers on my mind.)
So I’m not sure the virtual tradeshow concept would work with audio pros. Sure, we can download brochures, check specs online and watch video product presentations, such as some of the FOH-TV clips we offer on fohonline.com. On the software side of things, access to a demo “try before you buy” version of an app you’re interested in can tell you a lot about how that particular tool will fit into your workflow — or even function with your particular OS or platform. Yet somehow, feeling the impact of a double-18 subwoofer loses a lot when translated to a webinar, and that also holds true for listening to the nuances of high-frequency performance or off-axis response. And the same certainly applies to checking out the tactile interface of a digital console first-hand.
There’s no doubt that tradeshows offer a chance to spotlight new technologies and the lure of the exhibit floor is a major force in driving the industry. Tradeshows offer an event, a fixed point in time when we as an industry come together and meet, share experiences, do a little handshake social networking (as opposed to online social networking), press the flesh and stay in touch. I do know that if I had a dollar for every product concept or schematic that was born out of a drink with a colleague and sketched on a rum-soaked cocktail napkin in the hotel bar, I’d be rich.
Yet technology aside, the soul of any tradeshow comes from the attendees themselves, and this year, InfoComm proved to be very magic indeed.
Contact George Petersen at george@fohonline.com.
