Adrian J Cotterill, Editor-in-Chief
Today’s NEC Annual Showcase held in the UK At Battersea Power Station was a very good event and as mentioned in Darth Fabian’s (previous) post we will have a couple of stories up tomorrow (Thursday) but whilst it is still fresh in our mind we thought we’d ‘blog’ a recurring thought throughout the day.
How many end users were at the event? There seemed to be plenty of folks from the education sector – no doubt folks who have an existing relationship with some NEC partner or other. We noticed lots of out-of-work-folks-looking-for-a-job consultants but not really any retailers or other network folks. The whole event was truly I believe a ‘partner’ event and hence full of very nice #AVtweeps.
What we would like to see is this sort of event being part of #ScreenMediaExpo rather than a separate event 7 weeks before it. For those who saw what NEC did today (and it was amazing) how much better for it to be an ‘NEC Partner Pavilion’ inside #ScreenMediaExpo itself.
NEC get their partners there and can put on a show but they also get the benefit of 4,000+ other folks attending.
One NEC partner who has had a booth at the event since the very early ‘Pinewood Studio’ days told us that whilst the event is worthwhile attending they have never ever had a sales lead from attending!
April 6th, 2011 at 18:07 @797
The pull of seeing one display manufacturer’s wares at an event has a very limited appeal to end users who do not care about the badge on the front of the display they have in their cinema, store, reception etc.
I am not surprised by the comment regarding ‘no sales from attending’, these type of events are general for those attending to meet with those they already know.
Screen Media Expo is THE UK event for potential end user customers and those curious about ‘the thing they call digital signage’ to attend and Mark and his team ensure that they have plenty of choice and diversity on show to get a true feel for what they can achieve by signing up with us all.
April 6th, 2011 at 20:08 @880
I thought I read Screen Media Expo had moved to Las Vegas. What? Huh?