Event Organisers Please Take Note
Adrian J Cotterill, Editor-in-Chief
September and October are incredibly busy months as the industry gets back to work after the July and August holiday season. As you can see from our events calendar every week in September there is an event.
That’s all well and dandy but there’s a problem and it’s a big problem that needs to be fixed. All of these events are literally ‘all over the place’ – some overlap, some are a week and 30 kilometres apart when they could be in the same city on following days and the organisers (either professional conference folks, corporations or industry associations) are not working together.
Several culprits spring instantly to mind as we plan to attend their events shortly…
- Why did Scala organise their International Conference in Amsterdam in September when they knew that it would overlap with the OVAB Europe / invidis 5th Digital Signage Conference (all the more ‘galling’ when you think how good the 4th Digital Signage conference was the year before) and yes blah blah blah we know that it helps Scala that IBC will have just finished and some of their partners will be around but bottom line the industry has missed the opportunity to have 200+ Scala partners participate in what is a very good digital signage conference. Lest you think we are beating up on Scala solely here we feel that OVAB Europe are also culplable for not sorting out a back to back event in the same locale.
- Why wouldn’t NEC hold next week’s NEC Competence Day in Köln a month later and have it in conjunction with Viscom Dusseldorf 2011? Viscom spoke to NEC back in 2010 about better co-operation between the two to no avail.
In 2012 it’s imperative that large corporations, (the serious) event organisers and industry associations work more closely and plan better.
- We’d like to see NEC hold their 4th Annual UK Showcase in conjunction with Screenmedia Expo (last year NEC’s 3rd Annual UK Showcase was a superb event held at Battersea Power Station in April and must have cost GBP 500K to put on at least. However four weeks later was an even better (easily the best ever) Screenmedia Expo also in London. It’s absolute madness to have events such as these as separate events. NEC could probably have saved a fortune by having an ‘NEC Pavilion’ say inside Screenmedia Expo itself.
- We’d also like to see AOpen, ComQi, Scala and any other vendor that goes out of its way to do ‘partner forums’ and the such like (hats off by the way to all of them for doing that) to hold them in conjunction with a larger industry-wide event.
New York City in October of course will demonstrate the power of working together, see our post ‘Three Good Reasons To Be In NYC In October‘ which thanks to the wisdom of the DPAA, the Strategy Institute and indeed PRN (which has always held its upfront next to the DPAA annual event) sees not three but four events in one week that intrepid industry folks can attend.
September 1st, 2011 at 14:00 @625
This will be because they couldn’t get different tenancy dates.