Canon, SMTA to Partner on Show
Staff -- Tradeshow Week, 8/6/2007
The Surface Mount Technology Assn. has agreed to officially endorse Canon Communications' annual Electronics West, which is collocated at the Anaheim Convention Center with six other Canon shows: Medical Design & Manufacturing (MD&M) West, Pacific Design & Manufacturing, Automation Technology Expo (ATX) West, WestPack, PTX West and Green Manufacturing Expo. Electronics West and the other shows will take place Jan. 29–31. An associated conference will start a day earlier.
According to the agreement, SMTA will encourage its members to participate in Electronics West and produce conference programs for two of the seven shows. The SMTA Medical Electronics Conference will run alongside the MD&M West conference, and SMTA will produce an electronics manufacturing conference specifically for Electronics West. In return, Canon will promote the SMTA medical electronics and Electronics West conferences as part of its own attendance promotion campaign.
"Our event has been seeing good growth, and the agreement with SMTA will reinforce that," said Canon President and CEO Charles McCurdy.
He added that the departure of the Assn. Connecting Electronics Industries' IPC Printed Circuits Expo, APEX and the Designer's Summit from Los Angeles for Las Vegas, announced this spring, provided a good opportunity for Canon to make Electronics West stronger, because it further opened up the January-February time period as well as the Southern California market.
Kevin O'Keefe, Canon vice president of the events division, said the agreement with the SMTA would add 80 to 90 large exhibitors to Electronics West's existing base of about 400 companies. Canon expects the seven collocated shows to attract about 3,000 exhibitors.
The Canon-SMTA agreement is for one year, but McCurdy said it would likely turn into a multi-year deal encompassing Canon's three other major electronics shows in New York, Rosemont and Charlotte, N.C.
"SMTA could bring its seminars to those areas, which have high concentrations of electronics manufacturers," O'Keefe said. "We're starting with Anaheim and working outwards."
