The annual countdown is on! From early January, the fourth floor of Diversified’s Portland office is in a state of constant chaos – organized chaos! The seafood team begins to talk about life after Boston and Brussels. Life is simply postponed until May 1st or thereabouts. Phones are ringing and everything falls into priority mode or should I say constant fire drill mode! In the tradeshow industry, we tend to live at least several years ahead of ourselves. We are in mid February now and already have had numerous conversations about 2011 and beyond.
Often we are asked about the “behind the scenes” of a tradeshow. Right now, it’s all about staging of freezers for move-in, stand designs, fire regulations, security and this year, where do we get enough hand sanitizers for the show? Everywhere, there are boxes of seafood packages for new products competitions and the annual worry of what will we do if the awards don’t arrive on time? There are a lot of “we should think about that for next year” as well as "what do our attendance numbers look like"? Right now, I am happy to say we are way ahead on pre-registration but that does not stop the sleepless nights before the show opens. One thing is for sure though, the older I get, the faster these shows keep coming around.
