Here are this year’s Trade Show Week Fastest 50 (fastest growing trade shows). Congratulations on keeping growth up in a down economy.

Michael Hart posts some interesting audience response system results from the opening session at TS2 earlier this week. He says:

Some 34 percent of the audience said they had already seen the rising cost of airline tickets and the elimination of flights have an impact on their exhibiting programs. Another 43 percent said they were still OK, but were watching the situation closely. Only 12 percent said they weren’t worried.

He also relates that almost 60 percent of the anxious TS2 exhibitors said they were planning to scale back on trade shows if travel costs continue to rise, and 11 percent would quit exhibiting. Sobering numbers, to be sure, but I agree with Michael that it’s not doing anyone a favor to try to sweep this kind of information under the rug, to put our fingers in our ears and yell, “la la la, I can’t hear you.” It may not be pretty, but it is what it is, and smart trade show folks are preparing now for potentially tougher times to come (while of course still hoping for the best, or at least better).

This time it’s Let’s Talk Trade Shows, written by Joyce McKee. It looks like she’s been blogging since December, and I’m just now hearing about it (shame on me!). Anyway, lots of good trade show items on there. Among her recent entries:

How to Thrive – Not Just Survive – This Economy with Brilliant Marketing (who could resist that headline?), about how to download a special report on the topic that got a rave review from at least one reader so far.

‘Marketing During a Downturn’? Let The Numbers Do The Fighting For You…

and lots of other good nuggets about marketing in today’s most interesting environment. Not only is the info good so far, but she’s a dog lover like me! Another blog to add to my RSS reader.

P.S. New folks are great, but I still miss Rich and his TSMI Trade Show Marketing blog like crazy.

I’ve written before about the “bigger is better” syndrome when it comes to meetings. Now this article about the CES show reinforces my feeling that sometimes, bigger just gets in the way of better, especially when it comes to trade shows. A snip:

The convention, one of high-tech’s most important annual gatherings, has never been bigger. Roughly 140,000 attendees will trudge through 1.85 million square feet of exhibition space.

But despite its size, or perhaps because of it, the annual conference has become a challenging and sometimes ineffectual place to introduce new products…

…Technology companies now frequently introduce their products elsewhere, in an effort to reach consumers more directly. The Apple iPhone, the Nintendo Wii and other recent must-haves were not unveiled at C.E.S. One of the industry’s biggest hits in 2007 was the Flip Video camcorder, an easy-to-use pocket-size device that sells for $120.

Executives from Pure Digital Technologies, its maker, visited Las Vegas last year during the show but kept to their hotel suite at the Wynn, quietly briefing retailers on the device.

Some of the problem with CES is that it is all about technology, and technology is everywhere. Its market just got too diffuse. But I also think sheer size factors in.

Scott Briscoe posts some interesting thoughts about trade shows on the Acronym blog. A snip:

Recently on ASAE & The Center’s Meetings and Expositions listserver, someone asked how to enliven a tradeshow so attendees will visit booths.

There really is only one good answer to the query: make sure the exibitors have products, services, or information that the attendees want to talk with them about. Anything else is a cheap gimmick that won’t do any long-term good.

There are some interesting comments, including one about knowing when it’s time to let go of something that doesn’t work, and another that posits a possible solution to the problem. I spouted off there, too, so I won’t here. But check out the conversation. I’d love to hear your thoughts on revitalizing trade shows. It’s one of those things we all talk about, but I haven’t heard of any real, lasting solutions yet.

The Center for Exhibition Industry Research just launched a blog to talk about key exhibitor issues (geez, these trade show folks are suddenly getting all bloggy on us, aren’t they?). From the press release:

Bloggers are encouraged to contribute their experiences on the subject, particularly in terms of:
The Preventive Process - The proper care and feeding of key exhibitors
Responding effectively to requests/demands of key exhibitors
How organizers can cope with the loss of key exhibitors

The objective of this blog is to serve as a place where exhibition organizers, exhibitors, and others can exchange thoughts and practices that are designed to better understand the role that key exhibitors play in the universe of exhibitions. It is a place where case study-type experiences can be shared, critiqued, commented upon, and cataloged.

But my favorite part was how they explained the reason behind setting up this blog: They released a white paper on the subject, which got people talking at the conference, which got some folks to suggest CEIR continue the conversation via blog. “Therefore, CEIR will launch a blog…” It just cracked me up to see “therefore” and “blog” in the same sentence, I don’t know why.

OK, so not everyone thinks the new IAEE blogs are all that great (see the comments to this post). But I challenge anyone to quibble with this one: Confabb. So far, the posts are uniformly good, I think. And it’s featuring Tim Bourquin, one of my favorite bloggers in the trade show space with Tradeshow Startup (check out his first post is about naming a show). The post on Web 2.0 and the tradeshow industry also is well worth checking out.

Here’s the list. Congrats to the winners.

The folks at Tradeshow Week have been busy lately—they’ve added three blogs to their online content. I am particularly enjoying one called Behind the Story, where the editors give you some of the stuff they couldn’t in print.

While I’m generally not wild about group blogs, which this one is, I do like that they include the poster’s photos with their posts, so it’s easy to see who says what. It looks like it’s been around for a few months, and I’m just now noticing.

If there are any other interesting meetings-related blogs out there, I’d love to know. Drop me an e-mail or leave the URL in the comments. Thanks!

When did trade shows head indoors? What instigated today’s fire codes and safety regs? How did supply and demand pricing come to be? For the answers to these questions and much more about the ideas that changed history, check out this little gem of an article from Exhibitor magazine.

(Thanks to Access All Areas for the pointer.)