Michael Hart

Greg Farrar Is Latest to Go

The recent announcements that Greg Farrar had resigned as president and CEO of Nielsen Business Media and that Gordon T. Hughes II would be leaving American Business Media later this summer can be added to a long list of similar announcements concerning tradeshow-related institutions during the past year or so.

In fact, there have been so many of these announcements, under so many different kinds of circumstances, that one of the first – Mike Cooke, former CEO of dmg world media – now practically seems like ancient history.

It inspired me to get at least semi-scientific about things and go back to our most recent Power Pack. As regular Tradeshow Week readers know, typically every other year we publish a list of who we perceive to be the 100 most influential individuals in the tradeshow industry. The most recent list came out in June 2008.

Sixteen of the individuals on that list of 100 are no longer associated with the companies or associations they were with when it was drawn up a year and a half ago.

Certainly, it’s a sign of the times. Some of these individuals left where they were under what appeared to be fairly negative circumstances; others took advantage of opportunities to move on to what they believed would be bigger and better things; some just disappeared more or less into thin air.

Are 16 departures from significant leadership positions in what is a relatively small industry in a year and a half a large number? We can each draw our own conclusions about that. I can say that the reason we decided at one point to publish this Power Pack every other year instead of annually is because we didn’t think there would be enough changes from year to year to make it relevant.

Suffice it to say that when you see this year’s list – in our June 7 Power Pack issue – there will be some new faces.

Posted by Michael Hart on January 26, 2010 | Comments (0)