Re: NAB Urban Legend?

[GrahamS] "you have my attention."

I swear to whomever, I SWEAR I was working on this reply when I saw Graham's post, so I moved this one down.

Cows, meet Graham Sharp, VP and General Manager of Avid Video. He's the straightest-shooting guy in the business, and relentlessly customer-focused. When he was in charge of the European business, he had no use for posturing or going through the motions, especially at trade shows. Him becoming GM of Avid Video is the most encouraging thing I've seen from Avid in a looooong time.

And since I never had the pleasure of reporting directly to him, this doesn't count as sucking up. :-)

Anyway, here's what I was going to say. This conversation is headed exactly away from what's important about road shows, and irrelevant about tradeshows.

Let's say that a tradeshow costs $4 for a vendor to attend. Let's say that vendors could do everything they need to do with 4 people.

Tradeshows still bite.

Are tradeshows a good place to meet management, from product managers to GMs and CEOs of the multi-billion dollar companies that are most important to us? Are tradeshows a good place for you to expect a long conversation about your work so that these managers will understand your very specific and personal needs?

No.

Are road shows? Yes.

Are tradeshows a good place to discuss development strategies with the people developing those strategies?

No.

Are road shows? Yes.

Are tradeshows the best way for you to kiss your wife and kids every night before you go to sleep? The best way to keep your work on track and your clients happy?

Uhm, no.

Roadshows blah blah blah.

Look, I've done both booth time and road shows with Avid, Boris, Media 100, and even though I didn't do any for Adobe, I certainly saw it in action. The people you want most to meet are at road shows. The conversations you most want to have are at roadshows.

Road shows are the place for meaningful communication. Trade shows are just about the worst.

So why should this be an either/or proposition?

Because the people you want doing the work are exactly the ones sucked into tradeshow planning, starting in October, and pedal to the metal from January to May. Is this really what you want them to do?

The advantage for companies opting out is that they free up as much as tens of thousands of person-hours to do exactly what you want them to do -- fix the existing bugs and build new features. They free themselves from arbitrary deadlines.

Tradeshows are most valuable for you to meet the people you already know, and to meet some that you only know online. They may be an okay place for you to learn a few things about a product, but if you had the chance to talk with GM or CEO of your favorite company face to face, and sleep in your own bed, wouldn't you make that trade off?

So this is about twice as long as I meant it to be...but typical for me. Neither Avid nor Graham need me to speak for them. This is me telling you that tradeshows are already irrelevant for anything important between you and your favorite vendors.

And my own experience that you'll get the contact you most want, face to face, closer to where you live, from a road show.

This is a business forum. This strategy is good business. Once you experience this yourself, your word of mouth will be the best marketing imaginable.

The sermon is ended. Go in peace to love and serve your wife.

tw