Trade shows worth the trouble?
By Nicole Kobie in Editorial
Mobile World Congress - for a show dedicated to all things mobile, it sure does make me want to go home and be as immobile as possible.
Spread over the massive Fira halls in Barcelona - as well as a few outlying hotels - Mobile World Congress (formerly known as 3GSM, aka Hell) really must be the entire world of all things mobile. It’s ridiculously huge. And packed. Thousands of people with freebie-laden, logo-emblazoned bags shoulder past each other, squeezing around stands of shiny new phones and all the tech that backs them.
As a journalist, it’s a painful experience. I arrived in sunny Barca early this morning (via EasyJet, so imagine my mood — not so sunny) and by the time I cabbed my way to the show, the place was teeming.
Elbowing my way through the aforementioned crowds, I had to leg it from the press registrations to my first press conference, then leg it across a few halls and up some ramps to a briefing, before legging it out of the venue and across a big traffic circle to the Microsoft annoucements, afterwhich I had to leg it back to one of the main halls for another pair of meetings. This is no easy feat - not least because I have rather short legs.
Sure, I got to see a lot in a short span, but it seems a hard way to get things done. So I pose a question to all you IT and industry folks: what exactly do you manage to get done at these shows? Is it worth braving the crowds to get some knowledge and cut some deals, or is it all just a massive waste of time (and company expense accounts)?
Your thoughts in the comments, or drop us a line via the IT PRO Facebook page.
Rated: 100% (2 votes)
Loading ...Comment by Chris Abbott - February 12, 2008 on 9:40 am
I found it good for meeting companies I’d already been planning to meet, but I really feel sorry for the smaller stallholders just waiting on the offchance someone from Google would come by, sweep them into his arms and acquire them for billions of dollars. It would be an awfully long week.
Comment by Chris Abbott - February 12, 2008 on 9:42 am
Oh yes, and everyone is “leading” or “pioneering”. Just for once, why doesn’t someone write the truth?
“We are a me-too company with average tech, half the clients we say we do, and we’re just marking time until our marketing guys can attract Nokia’s attention”.
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