Friday, July 17. 2009

#ESRIUC: A good show for exhibitors?

Most every user conference and other major conference that I've attended this year...and I've been to many of them (GITA, PBBI's user conference, Intergraph's user conference, ESRI FEDUC, Map World Forum [India], Geodiffusion)...has experienced the pinch of the recession. The attendance has been reduced by as much as 30% in some cases putting extra pressure on exhibitors to thoroughly evaluate the return on investment of their sponsorship both now and in the future.

With respect to the ESRI User Conference this past week in San Diego, I heard mostly glowing reports from the exhibitors with whom I spoke. While the number of attendees "seemed" less, especially during the Map Gallery on Monday evening, the numbers both reported and rumored of the attendance was still exceptionally high...probably on the order of 12,000+. That number was perhaps flat or a little below from previous years. But this year, flat is good.

I thought one exhibitor put it well: "The noise was gone" referring to the fact that the leads they received "exceeded expectations" and were of a high quality. This was echoed by several exhibitors. Another exhibitor told me, "I gave my team a goal of 500 leads and by Wednesday we had 560." So, all in all, the investment in the UC paid off this year.

And for some reason, everyone was jumping on the bandwagon of giving rides in GPS-enabled vans. Topcon, Trimble, and NAVTEQ were canvassing attendees to show off their technology. (see images below)

Hard-working NAVTEQ marketing guy

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