Last week, I attended IAEE’s annual meeting in lovely Las Vegas. It was conventioneers and cowboys as the annual Country Christmas & Rodeo were in full swing. Actually there were two other shows in town as well—Questex’s Luxury Travel Show over at Mandalay Bay and Tarsus’ Anti-Aging Show at the Sands, both of which reportedly did quite well. Just your average week in town!

One of the problems with putting on a conference and expo for exhibition professionals, many of whom are way more experienced than the association staff, is that we judge. Critically and harshly. We notice the details and miscues that the average attendee would never notice only because we’ve personally made those mistakes!

So with that and the holiday season in mind, here is my list of suggestions for next year’s Expo! Expo!:

1. Badges: Please make the first name on the badge the largest thing we see, followed by last name. Title can be small. Company name should be larger than 8-point type and carry onto 2 lines if necessary. Although honestly, I did get a charge out of being called President all week.

2. Room Sets: if the sessions are not going to be truly interactive, try using a different room set: make the front 1/3 to 1/2 classroom style, then the remainder of the room rows of seats. Remember to add some electrical strips for those using electronic devices (iPads, smart phones & computers) to take notes, tweet and blog in the classroom portion of the room.

3. Speaker Stages: While I understand wanting to get away from the usual long table and chairs on stage for panels, the tall chairs and cocktail tables on a stage looked very, very uncomfortable. Especially for women on the stage. Plus they are really expensive. If it’s a panel discussion taking place on stage, stick with comfortable chairs (with arm rests).

4. Twitter Hashtags (#): I’ve written a bit on the subject of Twitter before, but here goes one more bit of advice: Use one hashtag for a show—not one per session. The idea of a hashtag on Twitter is to share bits of learning or interesting things on a given subject—mostly with your followers who are not at the event. (Although there were some pretty funny tweets during the Awards Luncheon concerning the large number of awards, references to last year’s hypnotist and typos off the teleprompter).

When the session on the Social Media Worst Practices holds up some of the conference organizer’s efforts as examples—enough said.

5. Sessions: Kudos to the Education Committee for providing literally a plethora of sessions to choose from. The challenge: Too much to choose from especially with multiple sessions from a single track at one time without any repeats. Again overall, the sessions I went to were excellent and I’ll be discussing some of them next week.

6. Party Entertainment: When over half of your attendees are women, please no more dancing girls in scantily clad clothing! How about dancing guys instead? (Just saying!) Think about your audience and appropriate (but NOT boring) entertainment. And watch the volume—no one wants to have to yell over the music at a networking party to be heard.

Overall, congrats to those (especially the volunteers) who made IAEE’s annual meeting a memorable event.

Stephanie Selesnick, CEM is President of International Trade Information, Inc., a Los Angeles, CA-based boutique international exhibition management and conference company founded in 1972. ITI has always had an international focus—whether launching shows in other countries or bringing foreign exhibitors and visitors into U.S.-based exhibitions  and events. Reach her at stephanie@intltradeinfo.com and follow her on Twitter @StephSelesnick.