These Are the Good Times

Recently, a friend of mine who also happens to be an industry leader called me to take issue with a blog posting I had written a few days earlier. With the posting, I had tried to demonstrate the anxiety many people in the business world feel, not just because of the problems they know about in the economy, but also because of everything they worry that they don't know.

That blog posting was motivated by a reader who had called to tell another editor here – we're hearing from a lot of readers these days – that, contrary to what we were reporting in Tradeshow Week, he and other employees at his company were “just one step away from the soup line.” Combined with high travel costs, decreasing attendance (in some cases) and exhibitors starting to cut back on booth staff and size, it's clear times are tough for some.

My friend and faithful reader told me, quite politely, that I owed it to the tradeshow industry, as editor of one of its leading publications, to communicate confidence. I don't disagree with him, but it does bring up a knotty question that editors of publications with a very specific readership have when the economy is somehow troubled: Do you try to deliver whatever the bad news is so your readers can arm themselves with information that will help them survive the trouble, or do you err on the side of discretion, perhaps pulling a few punches, in order to avoid unnecessary panic?

I've thought about this for the past few days (and, really, for the past few decades), and I would like to believe we can do both.

I believe Tradeshow Week's No. 1 goal and reason for existing is to supply its readers with all the information they need to successfully run their businesses. Certainly, we do that with our news reports, but also with our various directories, quarterly and annual reports, research projects and events.

I also think we can be helpful by sifting through all of that information and giving an assessment of what it might all mean.

I do believe that, for the most part, the tradeshow industry is healthy – but, naturally, there is a caveat or two. We all know there are shows serving sectors that have problems, such as retail, and so some of those shows have problems. But not all of them. I would argue that organizers who are listening to their communities, looking for ways to serve their industries and not necessarily just selling exhibit space will do fine.

I believe – and have said here before – that, in the short term, there will be challenges as airlines continue to tighten their schedules, raise airfares and make it more difficult for attendees to get to shows.

I believe that, over the long term, it will be harder to attract younger members of the workforce to events and difficult to convince them of the value of face-to-face marketing.

I also believe that these are challenges that can be met. Those of you who have been in the tradeshow business for 20 or 30 or 40 years can certainly look back at times that were much more difficult than these and see that you and your colleagues went on to not only survive, but also prosper. You probably also realize that some of the greatest innovations in the industry came as the result of solving problems that, to some, seemed at one time unsolvable.

That, I think, is the case today. Five or 10 years from now, the tradeshow industry might look different from the way it looks today, but it still will be thriving and it still will be populated by smart, successful people.

Michael Hart is editor-in-chief of Tradeshow Week. He can be reached at hartm@reedbusiness.com.