Are Trade Shows Dead?

I had the moral or career obligation to attend IMTS in Chicago last week. (The International Manufacturing Technology Show is one of the largest industrial shows in the world - with around 100K attendees - only held every two years.) Although I've gone to many other industrial shows over the years, I've never attended IMTS. My schedule and timing never worked out to attend until this year. My daughter and her husband just had a newborn baby here in Chicago, and I really wanted to see my newest grandchild, so this was a great excuse to come here to IMTS and visit family for a few days as well as go to this show. So, to address the question - Are trade shows dead, or dying? No, or not yet is the answer:

1) From what I've observed at IMTS, trade show spending is very much alive, thus, trade shows live on. They seem to be an effective way to get folks together in REAL LIFE and communicate, share stories and connect in a way that you can't do easily over the internet. I doubt VR will change this model anytime soon. Although there are some applications which seem to help in some aspects of connecting with others (I'll cover this at the end).

2) Trade shows are unique. I was able to connect or re-connect with many former colleagues and friends after many years of not going to shows during the pandemic. I was also able to spend some 'quality time' with some of the industry leaders which is harder to schedule and do without an event like this. Everyone is busy and it is hard to line up time with senior leadership of vendor companies without an excuse like meeting at a show.

What did I think of IMTS?

This is an interesting question.

Since this was my first time going to IMTS, I can say now that it probably won't be my last. It is huge and has a lot of good things going on, with machining hardware and software. The "eye candy" for a technology guy with a background in design engineering and manufacturing is second to none. I have been to other shows like this, but not this large. I have a few observations.

1) I'm not a big fan of the booth spiders - those who stand at the edge of their booth and try to reel you in with gimmicks. I've done this in the past, but I had way too many booths to visit in a short timeframe.

2) Some companies spend an extraordinary amount on these events! Setting up booths with huge machine tools must cost many millions of dollars for logistics and staff. I learned about OKUMA and Mazak and some of the others - and how these are the machines which make all other machines! I'm assuming they make enough in new sales to justify these marketing expenses.

3) For those who don't spend the huge money on their booth and still want to have a presence at the show, it may be a negative to be there. For example, I spent a long time trying to find the booth of a large CAD vendor but couldn't find it because I only had their booth number (numbering was really weird on the show floor), and the map didn't seem to help and I was looking for a larger presence (signage up high). I couldn't find it until I had circled around for about 10-20 minutes! For me this was a negative, since I was expecting more vendor presence. With that said, I actually do look for emerging companies in the smaller booths, but I was just not looking for a larger company situated out on the fringes. I did enjoy meeting some new vendors and seeing their advanced technology. The robotic demos were interesting and crowd pleasing.

4) I really enjoyed meeting some of the 'mainstream' computing players at the show. Since the big three (AWS, Google, Microsoft) don't really sell manufacturing software, but have a cloud presence and support many vendors that do create engineering and manufacturing software on their platforms, I sought them out and tried to figure out their strategy and why they're here at the show. I got a lot time and satisfaction from Microsoft. Simon Floyd was super helpful and accommodating with his time. We reminisced about our prior shows / conferences (particularly the Congress on the Future of Engineering Software- COFES, which I've been helping with lately) and we look forward to future events to bring people together in person.

Conclusion:

There are a few 'virtual' conference tools like Airmeet which are helpful to connect outside of a trade show or in person conference. However, getting a demo in person of a new software, meeting an editor of a magazine, and connecting or re-connecting with friends are good reasons to attend a show in person. Trade shows and conferences are not dead (for now). However, the best ways for me to end the day (after walking 11+ miles all over the wastelands of McCormick Place) was to spend an hour quietly holding my newborn baby grandchild. Just thinking of the possibilities of this new baby and what type of manufacturing technology the future will hold in this baby's lifetime is more mind blowing than watching current manufacturing technology with all of the associated hucksterism.