It’s the start of a new year and show execs are ramping up new strategies. Projections for the year are increasingly optimistic as organizers hope to once again capitalize on the moderate but steady momentum the industry has been building the last couple years. Here, EXPO presents five commentaries from event leaders that reveal what their priorities are for 2012 and where the industry at large may be headed.

Rochelle Burt, CEM
Managing Director, LIGHTFAIR International

We are beginning the year with an optimistic perspective of the tradeshow industry and the global economy. Already, the industry is showing positive signs of recovery with results for tradeshows held in January showing favorable results. We expect the momentum to continue as we look forward to the 23rd edition of LIGHTFAIR International (LFI) this year in Las Vegas May 7-11, 2012.

LFI will continue to focus on offering innovative products, a stellar conference program, face-to-face networking opportunities and the use of savvy technical platforms and social media to deliver the premier lighting event in North America. Our five pillars: 1. Innovation, 2. Education, 3. Face-to-Face Networking, 4. Technology and 5. Social Media will be critical in creating a valuable customer experience and successful tradeshows.

It is vitally important for our tradeshow to be relevant to the industry and its professionals at large. Our customers are looking for ways to grow their business, and LFI provides a comprehensive forum to help them achieve their goals, market their brands, discover the latest cutting-edge products, learn about emerging trends and technological advances, learn from experts and connect with other industry professionals all in one week’s time.

One of our main priorities is to create an annual show that meets—and exceeds—the needs of the lighting industry. We are strategic in our approach to introduce something new each year and this year we will launch a new exhibitor pavilion, enhanced mobile application and expanded on-site networking opportunities. We’ll also continue to use technology to communicate with our attendees electronically through the use of video and social media. 

LFI has experienced tremendous success and delivered its largest event last year with record-breaking attendance and the highest attendee satisfaction scores in the show’s history. We are poised for another great year and wish the same for other tradeshows in 2012!

 
Mark J. Levitt
Online Production Manager, O’Reilly Media 

The new year is shaping up nicely for O’Reilly Media. As an integrated media company, we’re not exclusively focused on events, but rather transferring information to our audience in the formats they desire—be that online, in print, or in person. Since live events come with the highest operational costs, we know it’s important to schedule them alongside other content types serving the same audience segment. For instance, we’ve recently announced Fluent (fluentconf.com), O’Reilly’s newest conference that targets Web developers in the JavaScript world. This nicely coincides with a ramp-up of our JavaScript-related publishing and webcast programs, supporting our 2012 plans to continue to offer year-round audience engagement. The last thing we’d want to do is put forth all the effort required to gather an audience for a great conference and end with “see you next year!”  Instead, we’ll reach them in the subsequent weeks and months with things like follow-up webcasts, video highlights, and online conferences.  

International

In addition to more frequent engagement, we’re looking at engaging with broader audiences in the new year through continued international growth. Tools of Change (toccon.com), about the future of digital publishing, and Velocity (velocityconf.com), which is dedicated to Web performance optimization, each made rounds outside of North America last year. We expect this trend to continue for those events and possibly others.

Mobile

Mobile is a very important space to us at O’Reilly, both in terms of content and event operations. In terms of content, we’re producing the 8th annual Where Conference (whereconf.com), which is for anyone in the location, mobile, and marketing spaces, and the 2nd annual AndroidOpen Conference (androidopen.com), welcoming those in the large and growing Android ecosystem. We’ll also make mobile a priority on the event operations front and expand upon the mobile event companions we began last fall to include all our 2012 events. We’re already seeing these used more than printed guides, and with the networking and way-finding features planned for our 2012 attendees, we know that audience engagement via mobile is the path forward.

Robbi Lycett
Vice President, Conventions & Conferences, Biotechnology Industry Organization

When asked for our 2012 outlook regarding the priorities for our BIO International Convention and for the tradeshow industry at large, our team highlights three main areas: Connections, Community and Value. These areas are important for the long-term health of our industry and our event, which contributes to the year-round mission of our association.

We are focusing on increasing the connections that occur at our event by making process, logistical, programming and technology changes that we feel will strengthen the connections between companies, academics, country delegations and others at our event. We expect to have more than 4,000 companies, 60 countries, 48 states and 300 public officials in attendance. As an event organizer, we know the importance of strong networking, efficient attendee agendas and insightful content that contribute to the community feel and valuable connections associated with this event.

For 2012, we made changes to the BIO Business Forum powered by our One-on-One proprietary software system that schedules more than 20,000 30-minute private meetings over four days. With this upcoming change, the 90,000 NSF area with over 300 private 2 x 3 meter rooms is now located right in the middle of the BIO Exhibition. In addition, we are improving and building the technology to open this in-depth matchmaking system to exhibitors and allowing pre-qualified meetings to occur in the exhibitor booths or the country and state pavilions. For us, these changes strengthen the connections, community and value for our attendees and exhibitors. The value of face-to-face connections even in the world of increased technological options is still very important to our industry.

For the trade show industry, 2012 is a year to strengthen the connections, community and value that is delivered through face-to-face events. We hope that event organizers will see it as we do: Attending events such as ours is a wise investment that will pay off exponentially in 2012 and beyond.

Larry Schur
President of All Baby & Child, Inc., ABC Kids Expo

Our top priority for 2012 in terms of investment and personnel is in attendance promotion. This industry’s retailers are going out of business at a record pace, at least in North America, so we will seek greater event participation from international attendees via increased international trade advertising, possibly incentives, and an international attendee breakfast. We also plan to hire a person dedicated solely for attendee recruiting.

The juvenile products industry has been hard hit during the past year by extensive store closures affecting our exhibitors, as well as increased government regulation affecting all of our exhibitors and attendees. As a result, we are hopeful that we can at least maintain both our exhibitor and attendee base with increased emphasis on international participation as well as possible category diversification. It’s interesting that we achieved our greatest growth while most of the trade show industry (and economy) was suffering, and now that there seems to be some recovery and even growth, we will be struggling to maintain our base in 2012.

In 2011, the show was produced in a new venue and, at that time, we invested a considerable amount of dollars to completely revitalize our show look, with more appealing graphics and signage.  Besides the new venue, we also made a change in our general service contractor and worked with an entirely new set of contractors. So, with a new city, new venue, new contractor partners and new entertainment/hospitality location options, our main areas of concentration for 2012 will be improving upon the services that were provided by the venue, our contractors and the city. 

Lance Fensterman
Group Vice President, ReedPOP

For ReedPOP everything we do starts and ends with the fan experience at our events, so our major investments will be in the form of increased infrastructure that is necessary and needed to safely and comfortably move up to 100,000 people in and out of our events. Technology that allows our fans to interact with each other and take full advantage of all that ReedPOP events have to offer. And lastly, technological improvements in our staging and special events, which are a massive components of every event that we run.

The ReedPOP manifesto starts with the credo “fans first.” Therefore, all of our investments are driven but what will increase the experience for our fans, bring them closer to the killer content they crave and make our chaotic and crazy shows easier to navigate and enjoy.

We’ve been fortunate at ReedPOP to enjoy record growth for the last 4 years and we see no signs of slowing. Our business model is ‘divergent’ from a traditional b-to-b event and all of our growth is clearly fueled by providing passion fans of all stripes of pop culture the killer content and one-of-a-kind experiences they crave.

We have just announced a new event launch that caters to fans of fantasy football that we are very excited about. The event serves yet another passionate community that allows them to gather and celebrate all that they love about football and fantasy football in general. Look for it to hit Atlantic City in the summer of 2012 and while the event will allow fantasy leagues to conduct drafts, parties, hear expert analysis, it will be much more than that with memorabilia, professional football player appearances, interactive games, apparel, tailgating and much more. We are really stoked to bring another killer ReedPOP event to another community.