NXTcomm Hires a Dream Team

It may not be the Olympics, but NXTcomm, the highly anticipated telecom event reuniting the Telecommunications Industry Assn. and the United States Telecom Assn., will feature a dream team of its own, rounded out with the latest hiring of industry veterans Jim Forlenza and Bill Herman.

The TIA and USTA hired Forlenza as director of public relations and business development, and Herman was brought on as director of administration and operations.

"(All of the new hires) mean great things for NXTcomm," said Wayne Crawford, the show's executive director. "We had a good core staff and we had some key positions to fill so we went out to find the best people available."

Crawford was most recently vice president of exhibit sales at NAB, the Natl. Assn. of Broadcasters' show, and has also worked on the Consumer Electronics Assn.'s Intl. CES. He signed on in January. Michael Cerami, who for eight years worked in sales for CTIA — the Wireless Assn.'s show, CTIA, also joined the NXTcomm team in February as director of sales.

NXTcomm is scheduled June 18–21 at Chicago's McCormick Place.

The NXTcomm job offers couldn't have been more fortuitous for Forlenza and Herman, who at the time were in talks with investors about selling their company, Agile Events, which produced the Latino-focused home show Expo Tu Casa in Chicago, Houston, Phoenix and Los Angeles.

"As we were getting into the Agile Events stuff, we felt we had taken the Hispanic event as far as we could as a small group," Forlenza said. "In mid-February we found a publishing group that bought the Expo Tu Casa brand."

Forlenza would not disclose the name of the publisher.

While in the process of looking for a buyer, he and Herman also had to start thinking about what they were going to do next. "We both knew Wayne (Crawford) for many years, and we had kept a good dialogue going with him. He said he needed help in a few areas. It all fell into place from both ends and made a smooth transition from an employment standpoint," Forlenza said.

Herman joked, "I tried to get away from Jim. I started the day before him, so I am accusing him of following me."

The pair also worked together at E.J. Krause & Associates. Herman was director of global operations from 1996 to 2004, and Forlenza was senior vice president from 1992 to 2004. They both left to form Agile Events. Before E.J. Krause, Herman worked for Tradeshow Marketing and Expo Productions, and Forlenza directed tradeshows for the American Machine Tool Distributor's Assn.

Now they plan to bring their industry knowledge to the launch of NXTcomm in a little more than three months.

Forlenza said he is pitching in where needed, particularly on getting the conference program finalized, as well as on promotional efforts and public relations. Herman said he is focusing on operations, administration and organizing the company (NXTcomm is incorporated as its own entity).

The biggest trick may be melding what were two separate shows, USTelecom's TelecomNEXT and TIA's Globalcomm, both launched just one year ago, into NXTcomm.

It's not the first time the two associations have had a show together. For 20 years they jointly produced Supercomm, which had its swan song in 2005 with 25,000 attendees and 670 exhibitors spread over 309,000 square feet.

At the time, the associations could not reach an agreement to extend their partnership, so they split and launched their own events in 2006, permanently putting the Supercomm brand to rest.

Both claimed success, with Globalcomm attracting more than 18,000 attendees and 502 exhibitors filling 203,000 net sq. ft., and TelecomNEXT with 10,000 attendees, 270 exhibitors and 215,000 net sq. ft. Even as the associations lauded their own shows, exhibitors complained about the expense of going to both.

Then, last October, USTelecom and TIA made up, abandoning their separate shows to jointly form NXTcomm.

Herman is sorting out the details of making the two one again. The associations had only one-year contracts with their service providers, so one of the first things he did was extend contracts for NXTcomm through 2012. "Each show also had their own keynote and their own conferences," he added, which means those had to be blended.

Following his equally high-profile hire earlier this year, Crawford told Tradeshow Week, "I loved my position at NAB," but that the new job would allow him to manage a "broader range of elements. Career-wise, it's a great step up."

Cerami, who was already connected to the telecom world through CTIA, said he jumped at the chance to join NXTcomm. "Obviously, I'm very happy to be a part of the NXTcomm event. It's going to be a great event."

Now that the dream team's in place, the players have one goal in mind: pulling off a successful event on par with, or better than, the now-defunct Supercomm.

"Hopefully, Bill and I bring something to the party as well," Forlenza said. "It's a good group; there's a lot of know-how."