Page 58 - EE Times Europe Magazine | April2019

58 EE|Times EUROPE

OPINION
group’s planned demo of the industry’s first
Do We Need to Rethink silicon photonics co-packaged optics switch.
Rather than showcase the product at OFC
2020 in San Diego, the group decided to pull
Trade Shows? out and instead demo its technology on its
own premises at specially arranged customer,
media, and analyst days.
It’s a common theme: Organizers and com-
By Nitin Dahad panies are finding creative ways to present
their new products and technologies. In the
case of this year’s canceled or downsized
The EE Times Europe team came out in force in Nuremberg, events, the target audience is already primed;
Germany, in late February to attend embedded world 2020, despite people who had planned to visit a company
the avalanche of cancellations right up to the last minute, espe- may be tempted to go online and see its live
cially by the major chip companies. No Infineon, Microchip, NXP stream or webinar, view a talk, or download
Semiconductors, Renesas, Silicon Labs, STMicroelectronics, Texas a paper. But we could see this year’s contin-
Instruments, Toshiba, Xilinx — the list goes on. More than 200 com- gency arrangements become a trend.
panies bowed out, according to the organizers. Many trade fairs and gatherings make
But the feedback we gathered from visitors and exhibitors was their money by selling conference and visitor
unexpectedly positive. The comment we heard most often through- passes and selling exhibition space. The
out the three days of the trade fair was that while it may have been quiet, those who attended events of the past few months have certainly
had been able to spend more quality time with customers, partners, and suppliers. been an eye-opener for organizers and exhib-
Why was that so? Because they’d planned meetings in advance, and many individuals and itors alike. Some exhibitors might wonder
smaller companies had made the trip anyway. And because there weren’t hundreds of “tire whether there is a smarter way to use the
kickers” milling about, exhibitors and visitors were able to spend more time with the people hundreds of thousands of dollars they would
they had planned to see. I’m not saying tire kickers are bad — some casual booth visitors become normally spend on exhibition space, stand
leads, and some of those become new customers. But engaging with everyone is time-consuming build, and travel costs — especially when you
and can be counterproductive, particularly when what you’re really there for are the face-to-face consider the cost of participating at an event
meetings with the people you’ve been courting over many months of emails and telephone calls. like Mobile World Congress, which this year
So while concern over the coronavirus kept some contingents home, there was still plenty of was canceled outright, with very little chance
business and serious discussion going on at embedded world this year. Halls might have been that refunds would be forthcoming.
half-empty and visitor numbers down to about 13,800, but much of the feedback was that the There is probably still a need to participate
event had been worthwhile nonetheless. at trade fairs, because they almost always
Since then, we’ve seen other big events and meetings canceled. Nvidia moved its GPU tech- generate business — sometimes, millions of
nology conference, GTC 2020, from the San Jose Convention Center to an online event. In its dollars of it, people have told me anecdotally
statement, the company said that Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang would still deliver a — if done the right way. A platform that offers
keynote address exclusively by live stream, and they’d work with the conference speakers to face-to-face interaction can definitely be a
publish their talks online. worthwhile investment. But companies might
I also took a briefing from Intel’s Barefoot Networks division, which changed the venue for the pursue a better mix of conference booths and
sessions, streaming and webinars,
and face-to-face meetings.
Maybe the lesson from embedded
world is that the point of a trade
fair is to meet serious people to do
serious business. If you’re in it just for
lead generation, there may be a better
way to generate leads. If you want to
foster awareness of a new technol-
ogy, maybe live-streamed events and
webinars are a sound option.
IMAGE: NÜRNBERG MESSE / FRANK BOXLER tion and information dissemination
We’ll clearly have to wait a few
months to understand how effective
the alternative forms of communica-

have been in the wake of the many
canceled events. But there is a chance
that event organizers and partic-
ipants will rethink the purpose of
trade shows and consider making
them part of a wider mix of marketing
channels. ■

at AspenCore.

APRIL 2020 | www.eetimes.eu Nitin Dahad is a staff correspondent