Designfax - Upfront - Less is More.. More or Less

’Twas two months after Christmas
As I sprang from the house.
My bags were all packed,
Farewells made to the spouse.
I leapt to my car,
That was parked out in back.
And raced to the street,
Like Fittipaldi on crack.
My e-ticket declared,
Next stop: Chicago,
Where I’d spend a few days,
At the oh-4 Design show…

Enough of that. This page is for sober and serious discussion — well, most of the time. And this year’s NDES at National Manufacturing Week, what has been the nadir show for design engineering since its inception, is small. Not merely smaller — this year’s show occupies but one hall of the mighty McCormick Place, there on the shore of Lake Michigan, like Callista Flockhart thinly lounging on Malibu sand.

Does the reduced size infer that the show is bad in some fashion, and that people are ill advised to attend? Not in the slightest. NDES is merely suffering from a collision of circumstances. The steady decline from a peak of 1800 exhibitors in 2001 to an estimated 950-1000 for this year’s show is nearly 1:1 with a graph of manufacturing income for the same years. Companies cut trade show budgets during the preceding lean years. Air travel is expensive and potentially risky, while room and board is mostly just expensive. Companies that exhibit at trade fairs are focusing on less-costly regional shows, or skipping participating in shows entirely.

A regional show is what NDES seems to have become, over the 8 years of service I’ve put in with Designfax. Upwards of 80% of the attendees are from, perhaps, 250 miles of Chicago, and many exhibitors recognize that fact. It’s unfortunate that some major companies in the region have bowed out of exhibiting at NDES, but it should be noted that they’re also exhibiting at fewer shows than they had in past years.

So, should you attend? It depends. Are you a narrow-niche designer, responsible for a subsystem that’s fairly cut-and dry in its layout? You’ll probably do well to stay home. But if your current or future work depends on you to parlay an array of the latest component technologies into some high-falutin’ Next Best Thing, then NDES is where you should be, walking the aisles and seeing the hardware and software up close and personal. Even though we present scores of components and applications in our pages and on our website to try to meet your needs, there is nothing like being there. It’s the difference between watching a movie at home versus seeing it in a theater — psychologists and sociologists have all noted the community experience phenomena that make a comedy seem funnier and a drama more dramatic. You attend a trade show, with all its flash and buzz, and ideas flow, questions are raised, and pretty soon you have a rapport. How many opportunities does one have to talk with large clusters of motion engineers, phalanxes of software experts, and flocks of hardware vendors, all under the same roof? Exhibitors last year were commenting that, while attendance was lower, the quality of the connections was better, more intense, because more time could be spent with attendees discussing critical specifications and needs. And that’s what a trade show is really about, besides the enticing dishes of candy and plastic gewgaws set out to lure passers-by closer to a booth’s event horizon.

So once more unto the breach, dear friends. This issue’s product sections present a partial preview of what will be seen at the show, with booth number included to speed the search for that exhibitor. And we’ll be there, too, at space 4022. Stop on by and tell us how you’ve been.

This month in Design History: Edison invents the Electric Bill. Customers are surprised and shocked.