The Future of Trade Shows

I think the first trade show I attended was COMDEX and I enjoyed it. I loved being able to go to different booths and see exciting new technology. I also liked all of the giveaways and free swag. I went again the next year and refined my technique somewhat. Eventually I decided I didn't need a lot of free garbage and only paid attention to the technologies I really felt merited my attention. If they didn't have a giveaway, it didn't effect my opinion one way or another.

Fast forward a few decades and I rarely attend trade shows. Yes, there are a few I would like to attend but I have to be careful with my time. I also work for a large global company that every technology vendor would love to sell into. That means I refrain from providing my Sony credentials unless it is worth receiving hundreds of e-mails and phone calls.

Fortunately Sony is a large enough company that I have noticed a new trend in trade shows, thanks to the rapid advancement of virtual meeting technology. A few weeks ago, Microsoft put together a 90-minute meeting with just Sony employees in the United States where they showcased some of their newest products. We got to see demos tailored specifically to Sony's needs. Furthermore, I didn't have to get on a plane and waste countless hours traveling to an event. It opened my eyes to the next evolution in trade shows.

Not every company is large enough to warrant their own personalized meeting but it got me thinking about how to do a similar event for a number of smaller companies. A large vendor like Microsoft could put together several niche meetings and invite a number of customers from small to mid-sized companies tailored to their needs. With the skyrocketing costs of travel I am seeing, this would be one way to stretch people's time and budgets.

Yes I do miss the days of running around and competing with colleagues to find the best giveaways, but not enough to convince my boss to let me travel unnecessarily. Perhaps you feel the same way too.

Attending E3

This year is the first year my company has sent me to the Electronic Entertainment Expo or E3, the video game trade show. I have attended one E3 previously and so while I am not new to the experience, I am reminded that it is not for the weak. I arrived Monday afternoon and shared a shuttle bus with a bunch of young video game enthusiasts. When they found out I worked for a large video game company, they were excited to talk to me and see if I knew any exciting things that were going to be announced. Unfortunately I honestly didn't have any.

I checked into my hotel before heading over to the show. The only real activity on Monday was a number of press conference events. I enjoyed one and then headed back to my hotel to get some of the work done that I missed because I am out of the office. I know, I am a real party animal. Then I spent today at the show meeting with a large number of people. As luck would have it, I ran into one of the young kids from the shuttle bus who seemed to be enjoying the chaos that is E3. I was looking for a quiet place to rest.

My time at E3 lasted past 5pm and then I started walking back to my hotel. They have shuttle buses but after my ride this morning I felt I could walk the distance faster. I was right. Besides, I needed the walking exercise. I was able to have a nice dinner with a work associate and then he asked me if I could attend one of the after parties in his place. He had a late-night conference call to attend but promised the party organizer he would be there or send someone in his place. I was that someone and couldn't let him down.

The party venue was only about a mile from my hotel and I debated walking or taking a cab. My wife told me I needed the exercise and so I took her advice. Fortunately it was still light outside as my path took me through a sketchy part of Los Angeles. When I walked passed a toothless hooker, I decided I would be taking a different way back to the hotel after the party.

They were checking names at the party venue so I threw out my coworker's very Asian name and said he asked that I attend in his place. He was on the list so they gave me an elite-black wristband. I then took a special elevator to the roof of an exclusive LA club with an open bar. I found an empty space with a bartender that looked rather bored. I asked her for something without alcohol and without sugar. She stood there thinking for a moment as if I had asked for the secret of the universe. Finally she poured me a glass of sparkling water and threw a lime in it. I thanked her and worked my way through the crowd for a place to sit.

After spending all day walking around the conference, it was good to get off my feet. I strategically found a place where I could watch the Warriors basketball game and caught the last four minutes. It was an important game and so those four minutes of play took more like twenty minutes of actual time. It was well worth watching as the Warriors won. Naturally there was a lot of cheering. Unfortunately nobody could hear anything other than the loud music being blasted by the club DJ. As trying to find our company contact and having any valuable conversation was out of the question, I descended the elevator and walked a very different way back to my hotel.

I am only two days into E3 and am so ready to go home. Unfortunately I have meetings all the way until Friday and so I am stuck here for the rest of the week. I'm not sure I have the energy for many more days like today. I have decided that even though the bus may take the same amount of time to get to the conference, it beats walking.

Computer Tradeshows

I recently attended the Strata + Hadoop World conference in New York and it reminded me of the first computer tradeshow I ever attended: COMDEX. I was going to school at the time and was working as a consultant to pay my way. Las Vegas was only a few hours away by car and so a couple of us loaded into one and headed down. We spent 2 days at the conference and came home with a ton of crap. None of us realized that they gave away free stuff at conferences and so we gathered something from every booth we visited. Our bags got so full, we had to find more. In the end, the conference was more about gathering and not at all about computers. Unfortunately most of the stuff I picked up was useless and got thrown away.

I'm not sure why COMDEX died but eventually it did and for that I am sad. I will always remember it as a fun place even though I didn't learn much about computers.

Fast forward through all of the conferences and tradeshows I have attended and now I realize it isn't about the free stuff I bring home, it is about learning and improving my own skills. Strata + Hadoop World is an interesting conference because it mostly revolves around processing and analyzing large amounts of data. As video games produce large amounts of data, it is very relevant to what I do. I learned a lot at the conference but also picked up a couple of T-shirts in the process. After all, I had to live up to my original COMDEX roots.

Report from the Tokyo Game Show

I have been in Tokyo, Japan all week and was able to attend the Tokyo Game Show today. This is the first time I have ever attended the show and I am glad I didn't make the trip just for this show. Don't get me wrong, it was good to be there, it just wasn't very large. I was glad I had very productive meetings earlier in the week to justify the trip.

I got to the exhibit hall a little after the show opened and so the floor was not too crowded. The first booth I saw was from Electronic Arts (EA) and was for Battlefield 4. I am a big fan of Battlefield 3 and am looking forward to the next version. There was a lot of information about the new Frostbite 3 engine and it looks to have some great improvements that are especially nice for online play.

My next stop was the Microsoft booth where I was able to play with the XBox One. There were a number of games available which should put to rest any fears XBox fans have about not having a lot of game titles. I'm not sure how much of what I saw will be available at launch but they seemed in a playable enough state that if they aren't available on day one, they will be shortly after.

It was only fair that my next stop was at Sony's PlayStation booth. Microsoft's booth was a ghost town compared to Sony's booth. There were a number of lines, each containing an insane number of people wanting to play the PlayStation 4. There was also a healthy mix of Vita and PlayStation 3 games to sample. In all fairness to Microsoft, the XBox is not nearly as popular in Japan as it is in the United States. For every XBox 360 sold last week in Japan, there were 70 PS3's sold.

I enjoy a limited time spent at tradeshows in the United States and also enjoyed the day at the Tokyo Game Show. The one big difference between the two countries is the number of scantily-clad "booth babes" in Japan. It was not uncommon to see a crew of bikini models running around the exhibit hall. One unusually small booth had an equally unusual large number of models in their booth. I have no idea what game they made even though I passed that booth a number of times. I could probably pass it a dozen more and still wouldn't have any idea what they do.

The GEEX Show

Saturday I spent some time at the gaming and electronics expo or GEEX show in Salt Lake. While there were a few exhibitors, the real meat of the show was in one of three areas: The LAN party, the 24-hour contest, or the center stage.

The LAN party was an excuse for all the nerds in Utah to bring their tricked-out computers someplace where other like-minded individuals could appreciate them. It was like a custom car show only instead of cars, it was computers. In order to show the real power of the machines, everyone was playing games. It was fun to see, but not really why I was there.

The center stage was where you could see the StarCraft tournament on one side and listen to video game professionals on the other. I stopped to listen to the Electronic Arts guys talk about their development process for creating the SIMS game. It was interesting, but I didn't really learn anything new.

My main reason for being there was to see what came out of the 24-hour contest. The organizers had everyone write down game ideas on little slips of paper that were tossed into a hat. Three slips of paper were then drawn and the contestants had 24 hours to incorporate 2 of the 3 items into a game built from scratch. This year the themes were: 8-bit, jewel, and disease. At the end of the 24-hour period, there were some pretty good games created. They started as simple as a text-based game and became as complex as something that could be published. I was impressed with what every team did in such a short amount of time.

GEEX was a fun event and I will definitely attend again next year. Now I just need to decide if I am going to enter the 24-hour contest.