Doc Searls On Fixing Tradeshows

zachlipton writes "Almost everyone seems to have a love/hate relationship with tradeshows, the giant geek, suit, and vendor gatherings put on by a handfull of corperations. Doc Searls writes in this month's LinuxJournal on his suggestions for fixing tradeshows. The problem, as he puts it, is that traditional shows make two assumptions: 'what matters most is helping vendors sell stuff to customers' and 'knowledge flows top-down, from speakers to audiences.'"

My boss used to send me, thinking it was a "perk"

And I eventually had to say "please don't send me!" I hate those shows.

Re:My boss used to send me, thinking it was a "per

For those of us who consistently work 12-20 Hour days (including most weekends) it IS a perk. Especially if it's on the other end of the island so you have to be put in a hotel and your basic needs are covered (free food).

Even if you stay at an all inclusive it doesn't cost that much extra to take your girlfriend along.

Trade shows are in fact a substitute for vacation time if chosen carefully.

Note that no mention is made of new products or educational speeches. Relax and have fun if that means listening to Linus and ESR hurry through a Panel Discussion so they can get to Duns River Falls, cool. If it means going uh-ah-whoa over the same junk they showed last year. Irie. If it means grabbing free stuff from every booth in sight. Enjoy.

For me they are a "Perk". Even on the occasions where my company is presenting and I have to help set up the booth.

Re:My boss used to send me, thinking it was a "per

Amen to that! Why do you think places like Vegas, Miami and other touristy spots get chosen for big shows? Conferences are great because I get out of the office and talk to others on how they cope with their problems and when there's absolutely nothing going on at the conference that I like, I go to the beach or the casino. Best thing is I don't have a phone rininging off the hook unless it's REALLY a problem.

Top down is the way things work

Take a look at Slashdot some time and see how information drizzles down from those of us who are more knowledgeable about certain topics to those of you who are not as knowledgeable. This is the way education works, in fact. Either a person is taught something or discovers something themselves.

A group of ignorant blabbermouths take about the same amount of time to come to a coherent, correct conclusion as a group of elephants takes to swim across the Pacific ocean.

Re:Top down is the way things work

Oh hell, does this mean I have to tell the elephants to turn back? They are going to be some pissed off pachyderms.

You are of course right, Top-Down is what most people rely on.

The best and most valuable information is that which you have worked for and sought personally. This is the information that will stick with you the longest.

But, and this is a J-Lo sized but, there are not enough hours in the day to do that on every nugget of information or news you receive. Selectively DYOR, after that use others who *seem* more informed than you as a guide, the Top-Down education. If later you get time to see if they were right, all the better.

free alcohol

would improve things for everyone. And some cute promotters too. It'll be fun, everyone purchasing like the world ends tomorrow, and a speaker with hicups! and half of the audience snoring.

Bill, you have to go to the RFID conference,...boss i still have a headache for the IT conference last week. Oh, ok ill go, party on!.

Paying to be marketed at

The biggest problem I have with trade shows is that they ask you to pay to be marketed at. Why aren't the booth holders and keynote speakers paying to have a captive audience? Oh, they are? Someone is getting rich off this scheme.

Quite often that's the point...

Scenario: you are an IT manager type. Your division is about to take on two new missions. You go to the trade show; in one place and in a relatively short amount of time - typically 2-5 days - you get to see the major players in relevant markets exhibiting their wares. You can compare features and prices and tinker with hardware, often speaking to marketing, sales, and even technical folks in the space of ten minutes. You can also make a ridiculous number of contacts. Yes, you are paying to receive marketing, but if you have the need (as in the scenario) you get at at least as much out of the exchange as you give.

That sounds like good bang-for-the-buck, yes?

PS Disclaimer-thingie: I generally think of the RSA Security Conference [rsaconference.com] when I think of trade shows. YMMV with smaller expos.

hazza perlBOF

the perlBOF was the best thing at the LinuxWorldExpo! waah and they didn't have one this year! knowledge was flowing all over the place and speak listen relationships were bijectional at the least

As long as REAL knowledge flows...

Remember presentation of Windows 98?
BSOD while presenting the new "features"?
Products speak for themselves, you don't need to talk about them, just let people have a "test drive" and it's enough to give them a clue. And vendors will learn ALL that is wrong if they just watch people on their "test drives".

(yep, one of parts of BOFH, plug-in the high-voltage laptop into SCSI port because the port supposedly is meant to withstand it and be capable to communicate this way. If you're down some $10.000 on demo equipment you will learn not to lie to customers next time.)

More Free Stuff!!

T-Shirts, software, trinkets, etc etc etc. It's the only reason to go to Comdex anymore.

How to REALLY fix tradeshows

Simple: 150 kilotons

Priorities

Get your priorities straight... as long as they have high quality booth babes, I'm there.

Linux, Shminux - ECTS is where it's at..

.. if you want to witness a truly depressing display. There's the 'models' who really didn't think their acting career would come to being draped over a stand while hordes of sweaty-palmed gamers drool down their cleavage. There's the soul-crushingly poor 'gimmick' game stands such as 'Hooligan: Storm Across Europe', a game designed to be controversial but completely tedious to play. And the fact that the few genuinely original games will never see the light of day, being cancelled in favour of the big name no-gameplay titles. There's journos pretending to be interested in said games just in the hope of filling up a few pages. Oh, and just to cap it off, there's walking to get the cube from Olympia station, only to find yourself knee deep in discarded PR bumf. Now, that's a trade show.

To Pay or not to Pay...

One of the most interesting things about these events is who pays and who doesn't, and how. With IEEE conferences pretty much everyone bar the chair pays, speakers included.

At most trade shows there are four groups of people

1) People who are "interesting" speakers so get in free

2) Vendor People who have paid for a booth and are damn well going to speak

3) People who the Vendors want to buy stuff, who get one or more of tickets, flights, hotels, food & booze paid for

4) People & companies who want to learn stuff so they pay to go.

Tradeshows are 100% about selling, without that bottom line the rest of it just wouldn't happen. You must realise that there are people who need to earn a living and its really the people in group 3 who matter at these events.

So your target is to get into group 3. There are various ways of doing this but the main ones are

1) Be an influencer within a large SI, this way the vendors get large bang per buck. An influencer (e.g. architect, account manager etc) can steer many projects your way

2) Have a decent sales ticket item that is coming up to tender (not out to tender or its a conflict)

3) Be a one vendor shop, standardise on a given vendor then screw them for freebies. You can also get great freebies from other vendors by pretending you are going to move.

These are the key ways to get in free. One thing to say about these tradeshows is to collect the business cards. If you have an issue with some software then its always great to be able to email someone senior in that organisation with the problem. Most of the time they just pass it on with the phrase "sort it" on. Which means you get the top man helping you out.

Tradeshows work, but they work in a commercial environment where vendors are looking at 6 and 7 figure deals... this is not about the cheap stuff.

More dense a proposition ...

... switching to structures resembling a network rather than a tree is helpful in many cicumstances, especially where complexity (with regard to all relevant levels: social, economic, ... ) is looking as if it were an obstacle.

I think I recall this from researching into structures of communications in groups I guess 20-30 years ago. It did not make news then.

CC.

Trade shows are not USENIX conferences

I felt that the article was trying to turn comdex into a usenix conference. Totally different beasts and enjoy each for what they are or are not.

Trade shows are all alike

I've seen my share of different tradeshows. And by different I mean all possible (and unpossible) types of trade shows. I'm a magician [close-up-magic.dk] with trade shows as my speciality. That means, I've made it my business to make entertainment suitable for the tradeshows. And, I have to say this, be it a geeky tradeshow about the newest gadgets or a lingerie show about sexy underwear, they all look alike . After a while, I never see the products (unless I'm at one of the two types mentioned above ;) - all I see is the same kind of booths - the same setup - the same people. I agree with the article that the general idea of trade shows needs to be upgraded to the new millenium. The only difference I see now and 10 years ago is, that the women hired as eye catchers are wearing lesser clothes. Other than that, it's status quo.

Re:Trade shows are all alike

Forgive me, but that's what I hate about tradeshows. Why would I want to see a close-up magician at a computer trade show?

Yes, I like magic--we've just gotten tickets to Le Grand David and are looking forward to it. But if it turns out that Le Grand David's show includes a tutorial on software development I will be as appalled as I am by magicians at a tradeshow.

Fixing tradeshows?

Fixing them?

I didn't even know you could bet on them!

*B-dum chhhh*

Good old MacWorld, circa 1986...

...I remember when I could actually learn things at trade shows. I could belly up to a booth and play with some software hands-on and learn its capabilities. The people in the booth actually knew the product. In some cases they were developers.

The turning point came circa 1987 or 1988 and I remember the instant it occurred. I was evaluating a word processor, and the person in the booth didn't know whether it could import files from some other word processor. I said, "Well, let's try," and pulled out a diskette containing some files. And she said, "I'm sorry, we've been instructed not to let anyone insert diskettes in the demo machine."

I used to walk up to booths that were demonstrating OCR equipment, which, of course, always worked perfectly on the particular sheets they were scanning for the test. I would ask a couple of questions about its ability to scan a wide range of material, to which the answer was always "yes." I would then pick up some of the booth literature describing the product and ask them to try scanning it. If they said, "Oh, that's glossy," I would look around for anything in my bag or lying around that was, say, an ordinary typed (remember this the eighties) document on bond paper, until I found something that the booth representative agreed was a fair "real-world" test. They'd put it in the stack and scan it. The results were very revealing.

Starting in the early nineties, I started to encounter booth people that would no depart from their memorized scripts, had know knowledge apart from their memorized scripts, and would not allow any hands-on interaction or requests to explore features more deeply ("OK... so could you show us what happens if you...").

At MacWorld, I'd always head for the booths that were farther from the entrance where you'd sometimes find little companies that were interested in showing you their wares, not giving you the hard-sell. And I used to love the funky little BCS "Mac Megameeting," a low-key trade-show-like event.

How about a "clean license" tradeshow

Every once in a while, I actually take the pains to read the entire text of a license before pressing "I Agree". Sometimes, I'm quite shocked about what I read. There are (were ?) clauses in the Microsoft .NET CLR that prevent you from publishing profiling results of the CLR. I think this is stepping the line. BTW, I am not an MS basher - I'm sure there are many other companies doing the same thing. I was also bothered by the fact that we have to tear the shrink-wrap agreement (thus agreeing to a license) before being able to read the license agreement. I heard that some software also makes you agree to a non-disclosure clause on the terms of the license !

So, I was wondering, why not have a trade show where only software that have obvious terms in the licenses (not necessarily open source) are allowed. The license should be available to the public (maybe as a pamphlet or website), so that everyone (not necessarily customers) knows its details before making a purchase. I don't like anti reverse engineering clauses, but I can agree to them.

We could have different sections, depending on the various categories of licenses (open source, not open source, anti reverse engineering, cheat-'em-and-steal, etc.).

It's a Flea Market of course it's about selling

Trade shows are just flea markets with a homogenous clientell with a few perks like interesting speakers to teach you. Flea markets are all about selling stuff, meeting interesting people, and having a good time (I've been to some where a local band is actually performing). If you don't like them don't go, but the "problems" described in the summary (I'm not wasting time on the article) are not problems and any attempt to "fix" them will kill the show.

Where else will I be able to do the following all in one place:
Find cool products
Talk with knowledgeable sales reps
Be educated by a leader in the field
Network with other professionals

All of that for one low price!

If you don't like flea markets don't go, but don't try to kill the fun for the rest of us.

Successful Tradeshow in 46 Easy Steps

1. 'nother trade show boooooring, sore feet, idiots at the booth *grumble* *grumble*
2. nice. lucked out and got a cute girly girl in the booth next to me.. shes smart, too!
3. common ground: mutual boredom! start making fun of passersby
4. slight flirting, sweeping glances at each other
5. show's not that bad with good company, eh?
6. k, see you tommorrow for day 2, baby! ("baby" not said aloud)
7. back to hotel room, change out of zoot suit
8. room service food sucks, hit the hotel bar
9. look up from chicken tenders: whoa, hottie adjacent booth girl!
10. me: "come here often?" her: "tee hee hee!" yes! kitch rules!
11. beer me, slim, and one for the lady!
12. goto 11 while 1 == 1, break if currenttime > closingtime
13. stumble back to room with boothette
14. fall on bed
15. roll over close
16. tickle
17. peck
18. --silence--
19. hmmm.
20. slobber, clawing, heavy petting...
21. her: "wait. i don't know...", voice trails off
22. --silence--
23. "ah, fuck it"
24. cue porno music
25. GOD I LOVE BEING ON THE ROAD!!!!!
26. fade to black
27. time passes...
28. daylight through the blinds, clothes strewn about, girl not there
29. dammit gotta be on the floor in 10 minutes
30. blurry hygenic routine, head hurts
31. get to booth
32. booth girl not there, hope she's ok
33. idiots, all of them! yes, i've been drinking gasoline, *mother*
34. booth girl shows up, looks like how my head feels
35. both look towards floor
36. avoidance... hello idiot, i mean sir, can i show you what we have to offer?
37. crowd thins, running out of options!
38. initiate post-coital awkward conversation routine... engage!
39. time slows
40. please be 5 o'clock, please be 5 o'clock
41. ding ding!
42. run
43. while running, notice message board above enterence "see you tomorrow!"
44. GODDAMMIT ITS A 3 DAY SHOW
45. figure out if i can afford rent if i quit RIGHT NOW

the end.

oh...

46. Profit!!

What I like to do

I love to go to these trade shows, and fake the information. I usually put down info like Senior Network Administrator at (insert mega-corp. here) and just watch everyone kiss your ass.

thanks doc!

I've played about every role possible at a show: panelist, attendee, exhibitor, keynote speaker, organizer, booth builder, reporter and promoter.

not to mention being on a gameshow!

he was on my team at the 2001 Linuxworld Golden Penguin Bowl. if i remember correctly, he wasn't wearing any shoes for some reason...

anyway, from the little bit of work we did together on the show, i found that he was very knowledgable and laid back; just an all around good guy. if it wasn't for him, i doubt we would have taken the penguin home that day. thanks Doc!!

LinuxWorld Expo

Walking into the LinuxWorld expo this past January in New York City, you would think that HP, IBM and Novell were the most important and influential linux companies/organizations...

Yet all the way in the back corner, was the Free Software Foundation. Without their work, Linux would probably be a shadow of itself today.

They should be front and center, IMHO.

"corperations"

Is it that difficult to spell-check something that appears on the front page?

Hey Doc!

What does "attrition" mean? The term's not clear from the context. Why was it so important to your argument?

You clearly stated the traditional goals of the trade show, but your proposed goals are not nearly as clear.

Otherwise, a thought-provoking piece and a topic you should continue to examine. Trade shows suck; let's make them better.

He left out

He left out one of the most important things about the trade shows: The parties. I don't mean that you get free food, which has gone down in the past 6 years. But, it gives you a chance to meet and chat with people, vendors, presenters, in a non-formal environment, where you can chat w/o the suit&tie, hordes of people asking if they need a computer to run their software package.

One thing that he forgot, is that in most shows, charge for admission, but you can always get a free pass. At the 1992 Windows-OS/2 show in Boston, I saw someone ask to buy a $35 pass, though there was hundeds of free passes laying around.

Conflating session and exhibit-only attendees

I present at 6-8 trade shows a year, for about five years now. I've also done a lot of booth duty over the years, and covered shows as press.

One thing the original article missed is the big difference between people who pay the $300-$1200 to attend the sessions and seminars, and those who get the free (theoretically you have to pay ~$50, but free passes are very readily available).

Those two groups have very different experiences. Exhibit-only folks don't hear any sessions other than sponsored sessions. Full attendees get to do sessions, and often free food and decent swag, like conference bags. Best show ever for that kind of thing is Apple's WWDC. For example, free sit-down dinners, all the Krusty Kreme you can eat in the morning, fresh Jamba Juice throughout the day, an honestly good bag, and something Impressive. Last year, everyone got a free iSight, for example.

Lots of people I've hears complaining about how lame a show is are exhibit-only, and are missing the bulk of it. Also, folks in the booths are often told to prioritize their attention depending on the badge type. Attendees and press get the most attention - attendees since they've already shown they're willing to spend some money, and press because they're press. Speaker badges are pretty effective as well. Exhibitor badges make get a close look to see if it's from a competitor. Exhibit-only are on the bottom of the totem pole - they'll get talked to, but with less attention than any of the above.

The other thing that may not be apparent is the cost of the booths for exhibitors. A small booth rental, plus the cost of shipping of equipment, and transport for booth workers can easily be $100,000 for a significant show. I'm sure companies like Sony spent well in excess of $10M for a big show like NAB.

My personal favorite show is DV Expo, just because it's a fun group of folks, and at a human scale. NAB is where I do business development for the next year. WWDC wins for sheer geek envy.

sorry top buirst some bubbles BUT....

Tradeshows are for one purpose and one purpose only. To Build A Contact List.

Nike no longer does tradshows, after years of doing multi-million dollar spending on them.

Why?

Because they know everybody they need to ever know.

How do I know this?

Its the business I'm in... tradeshows and corporae theater.

Re:RTFC

apparently what matters most is connecting O'Reilly with customers?