Recently our colleague, Jeff VandenHoek, attended and review the 2011 AIA Conference and Exhibition in New Orleans. He filed this report for us.
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The show seemed a lot friendlier this year in terms of the layout. Rather than being split into different halls, as it was in Miami, it felt more inclusive or consolidated as a show this year. This is probably due to the fact that New Orleans is one LONG hall.
Neighborhoods: The show was broken down into bite-sized chunks by product. This made it very easy to navigate the event and really focus first on areas of interest. Ticking those off the list allowed extra time to wander the halls and see what was new.
Exhibits: I really liked the emphasis on “green” this year. It seemed that (as with the industry in general) it was more of a fixture at the event and less of a novelty. One exhibitor has benches made from wood bookends as the sides and the actual seating portion was an expandable and collapsible cardboard. This meant that a 6-foot bench collapsed down into 3 inches for packing and shipping.
Lighting really stood out at this show, particularly LED lighting. There was, in fact, an entire section on just lighting. There was a company there that had LED lighting build into concrete panels. The lighting was close enough (and computer controlled) so that it turned a sidewalk into a full color, full motion billboard. The manufacturer sees this in use in walkways, lobbies and on the sides of buildings. Pretty intriguing stuff!
I was only at the show for part of the 1st day, but it seemed very busy and well attended. My clients were extremely busy and while they didn’t see a big up-tic in leads, they didn’t experience any drop off whatsoever. I have pics I’ll email to you soon.
(Jeff VandeHoek is an Account Executive with Imagecraft Exhibits in Dallas. He is a frequent contributor to this blog)
Thanks, Jeff.
TTSG
