AIIM Wrap-up

Just finished up another great week at the AIIM show. This year's show was held in Washington, DC - a great city, but it can be a very expensive place to go for an event. Next year's event is apparently scheduled for June 12-14 at the Javits Center in New York City. New York in early June seems like a great time for the event, but, per our last post, it will also be the first year when the "AIIM" name will not be used. The event has been re-branded as Info 360. On Demand looks like its keeping its name.

From what we understand, ITEX will not be co-located with the two events next year. The feedback we got this year was that you had pay an extra $250 for an ITEX badge and that the monitors were checking badges. I know I tried to get on the ITEX floor and had to point out that my press credentials were good for both events. Anyhow, I heard ITEX is heading back out to Vegas.

This year's AIIM show was certainly the quietest I've ever seen. Yeah, there were still more than 130 vendors there, but almost nobody, except for Canon, had a large booth. And the number of presentations and booth shills to attract attendees' interest was very low. There were times when I almost felt I had to whisper to avoid from being overheard. The few exhibitors that gave me positive feedback about the attendance indicated that they had made several appointments ahead of time to create their own traffic. (In show organizer Questex's defense, this is what they have been telling people to do for years.)

The Microsoft Pavilion, which we figured had about the fifth of the exhibitors looked crowded, but that may have just been because there were so many vendors crowded into a relatively small space, and each vendor had multiple staff there.

For me, the event was once again a great networking opportunity, although there were certainly less people there to network with than in years past, but still enough to fill up my dance card for three days. We'll have plenty of coverage in upcoming issues of DIR.