We Take Leadership Seriously

As you know by now, since you've leafed through this issue of Tradeshow Week and finally gotten to the last page, we hoped to provoke a little discussion on the subject of leadership and who might be part of the next generation of chief executives to provide direction in the tradeshow industry.

As part of the project, Contributing Editor Gary Tufel spoke with former chairs of both the Intl. Assn. of Exhibitions and Events and the Society of Independent Show Organizers about their tenures in leadership roles. You can see their wide-ranging comments for yourself (page 18). I was once again struck by how seriously people in the tradeshow business take their professional associations.

As it is for any publication's editor, my job is to calculate what will be important to our readers and then make sure we tell them about it. Doing so is an imperfect science, to say the least.

For example, a few years ago I was caught off guard by the interest provoked by what turned out to not be a merger between what was then the Intl. Assn. for Exhibition Management and SISO. I initially perceived this to be a game of inside baseball played by a handful of association executives and their volunteer boards, and I thought the bulk of our readers would prefer TSW devote its space to news about their shows and companies.

It turned out, of course, that I was wrong and that the average TSW reader had quite strong opinions about, and great affinity with, their respective associations. Finally, with some nudging from my editor colleagues, I conceded we should give the whole un-merger the coverage our readers felt it deserved.

Then, a month ago, we published a guest opinion from ConvExx Chairman Chuck Schwartz, who wanted to take SISO to task for the direction he thought it was taking. As I have learned, that too provoked a great deal of discussion among readers, all with their own opinions about what their associations should be and do.

All of which makes me think that, in choosing to devote this issue to the next generation of CEOs in the tradeshow business, we made the right decision. As the industry changes, each of the handful of associations that touch on the interests of our readers is constantly rethinking its mission and refocusing the way it serves members. In order for them all to remain relevant in the future, the individuals at the top of these member groups five or 10 years from now will have to be prepared.