It's a Brand New Day for EMS Expo

First EMT show since Katrina adds fire safety and changes locale

By Heidi Genoist -- Tradeshow Week, 10/9/2006

Las Vegas—Maybe it was the first collocation with Firehouse Las Vegas; maybe it was the new site in the Nevada desert; or maybe it was the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. Whatever it was, something gave EMS Expo, Sept. 25–29 at the Las Vegas Convention Center, a feeling of renewed energy, participants said.

After all, last year's show, held at New Orleans' Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, wrapped up early as participants rushed to the airport to beat the storm.

"This is awesome," said Jamie Miller of Leavenworth County (Kan.) Emergency Medical Services, of this year's show. His colleague, Aniello Burr, added, "The classes are great, the vendors are great. We're excited to be here."

Both Miller and Burr said the collocation of the Firehouse and EMS shows made sense for the many emergency medical technicians like themselves who are also volunteer firefighters.

"There's a lot of crossover," Burr said. Having the shows together "makes it very convenient for us to see all the new equipment for both our jobs back home."

David Caplin, Cygnus Business Media show manager of EMS Expo, and a former 8-year volunteer EMT, said this edition of the show was the "largest and best attended ever." The show filled approximately 100,000 net square feet with 450 exhibitors and was expected to draw at least 6,000 attendees, based on preliminary registration numbers.

Although none of these statistics included Firehouse Las Vegas, which only had about 100 exhibitors filling 15,000 net sq. ft., the mere presence of the conference and expo geared toward firefighters helped increase interest in EMS as well, Caplin said.

And that was the way Cygnus had planned it. The company has produced Firehouse-branded shows in Baltimore (in July) and San Diego (February) for several years. When it acquired EMS Expo and some related publications from Summer Communications and EMS Productions in July of last year, then-President and CEO Paul Mackler said the new properties were meant to bolster Cygnus' existing first-responder brands.

Continuing that strategy, the company launched a third Firehouse show specifically to collocate with EMS Expo. Group Show Director Rob Brice said he wasn't worried about cannibalizing the Baltimore and San Diego Firehouse shows with the new event, because it's meant as an add-on to cater to EMS Expo's crossover audience, not as a standalone event.

Firefighters who do emergency medical service "are already coming to the show. Now we're offering them something here they haven't had before," Brice said.

The collocated events offer about 160 sessions, 60 of them for firefighters. The Natl. Assn. of Emergency Medical Technicians also sponsors EMS Expo and holds its annual meeting at the show.

Cygnus has decided to extend the EMS-Firehouse collocation for three more years, Caplin announced during the opening general session. Because EMS Expo traditionally has rotated around the country, going forward, the firefighters show will be called Firehouse Central (rather than taking on a new city name each time).

EMS Expo and Firehouse Central are next scheduled Oct. 9–13, 2007, at Orlando's Orange County Convention Center.

This was the show's first time in Las Vegas, and opinion on the venue was divided. Dave Herbers of exhibitor Stryker EMS Equipment said, "This has been a very good show for us. It helps that we have a lot of new products."

Others, like Air Evac Lifeteam's Suzy Fulkerson, thought the city's attractions pulled too many attendees away from the showfloor.

Erik Gaul, of the Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Police and a reserve officer with the Montgomery County, Md., EMS, said, "EMS, over the years, has gotten smarter about where it sites its shows. You have to put them in destinations that people want to visit."

While the show used to roam among second-tier destinations, it probably will stick with Las Vegas, Orlando and Atlanta for a while, said Gaul, who is on the editorial advisory board for Emergency Medical Services magazine, the Cygnus publication that supports EMS Expo.

Caplin and Brice confirmed that the collocated events are set for Atlanta in 2008 and Las Vegas in 2009. There are no current plans to return the show to New Orleans.