Brace Yourselves...

Ihate to always be the bearer of bad news — and those of you who know me personally would agree I'm actually an optimist — but the convention and exhibition industry has enough cheerleaders. Time for another reality check.

Industry mergers and acquisitions continue, everybody's going green and, according to our second-quarter report of tradeshow statistics, business is up in every measure (see, respectively, "Cobert and Veronis: Together Again," p. 1; the Industry This Week, p. 2; and "More Saying 'Here'" in the Aug. 20 issue). Life is good.

Lest you become complacent, here are a few things to consider as you jet off to your next record-breaking show or panel presentation where you'll tout your company's successes.

First, how'd that last meeting with your investment group go?

As I write this, financial papers from London to Tokyo are summarizing U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke's Sept. 20 testimony before Congress, in which he warned that the number of housing loan delinquincies and foreclosures would probably keep going up.

Losses suffered as a result of the subprime mortgage crisis have "triggered uncertainty about structured products more generally," reverberating across broad financial markets, the Fed chairman said. "Global financial losses have far exceeded even the most pessimistic estimates of the credit losses on these loans."

Bernanke, who a day earlier had lowered Federal interest rates by a surprising half-percent, and Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson were urging Congress to take specific measures aimed, in part, at assuaging investors' fears about credit.

On to the greening of the industry. As my editor-in-chief, Michael Hart, wrote in a late-September blog, it's reassuring to see so much news pouring in about convention centers recycling plastic and conserving water. But it's lunacy to think we can stop there.

In his Sept. 20 opinion, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman (of "The World Is Flat" fame), wrote, "Hey, I'm really glad you switched to long-lasting compact fluorescent light bulbs in your house. But the growth in Doha and Dalian ate all your energy savings for breakfast."

Friedman argued that, because of U.S.-style production and consumption spreading around the globe, the energy savings Americans achieve by doing thing like driving hybrid cars and buying solar credits is negated many times over by the waste produced in cities like Doha, Saudi Arabia, and Dalien, China.

I'm not telling you to forget about low-flush toilets and LEED certification. But while you're at it, if you want to be a real green leader, how about educating the convention center operators in those international sister cities that your PR people love to brag about so much?

Last, let's look at industry growth, up across the board in the second quarter.

Nobody's complacent about that, I know, but just in case, take a look at some of the numbers coming out of Las Vegas, where, according the Convention & Visitors Authority's statistics, convention attendance was down between 5 and 14 percent year-over-year for three of the first six months of 2007.

Although it remains the unquestionable leader among destinations, Las Vegas is doing anything but resting on its laurels, with new construction, marketing and service efforts underway at both the LVCVA and public venues across the city.

The point is not to be grim and pessimistic, but to learn from your peers and past experiences that good times are the best time to plan for a better future.