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The Shaughnessy Report: Canada Gets New Design Conference
April 30, 2008 | I-Connect007Estimated reading time: 3 minutes
The managers of PCB trade shows have their work cut out for them.
They know that a rainy opening day can negate a whole year's worth of planning. And even if your most recent show boasts great attendance and dozens of new product announcements, next year's numbers have to be the same or higher. Otherwise, analysts and snarky columnists will start to question the show management's soundness of mind, the soundness of the industry, or both.
The loss of one key exhibitor can spell weeks of bad public relations, as the Design Automation Conference planners discovered when Cadence Design Systems pulled out of this year's event. Cadence can't just show up with a 10x10 booth, and with budgets tightening, the company decided it was better not to even exhibit, after two decades as a so-called headliner.
Even a popular, profitable consumer show can bite the dust. Witness what happened to the huge computer show COMDEX. After years as the world's second-largest computer show, COMDEX got too big and died a slow death. Note to Las Vegas: Thousand-dollar-a-night room rates may have a chilling effect.
So, like animals in the wild, successful trade show managers have learned to adapt in order to survive. They co-locate their shows with other shows that serve similar, complementary audiences. Think APEX and Printed Circuits Expo, or the PCB Design Conferences and HDI Expo a few years ago.
Whatever it takes, nothing is off the table. Sometimes show managers pick a better date on the calendar, ever-mindful of federal and religious holidays. Or they change locations, or launch a new show at a completely new location.
And sometimes, we're talking about a completely new location in the Great White North. IPC recently announced the IPC Design Conference, set for this summer in Montreal, Canada. The Designers Council is running this event, to be held at the Courtyard Marriott at the Montreal airport the week of June 23-28. The technical conference and tabletop exhibits take place June 25, and the rest of the week is devoted to educational classes and CID workshops and exams.
A design show in Montreal just might draw a decent crowd. I've run into plenty of Canadian PCB designers and design engineers at conferences here in the Lower 48, and I've resisted the temptation to use words like "aboot" and "eh" during our conversations.
I've never been to Montreal, but I went to Toronto once. I spent most of that time driving around Scarborough looking for board shops and eating some of the best sushi I've ever had. The U.S. dollar was still worth something back then - now it's just about even with the Canadian dollar, the "loony."
Canada may be ripe for its own PCB design show, especially one located in the technology corridor in Montreal. We certainly can't sustain too many more design events in the U.S.; I think we've reached the point of saturation. We now have three PCB design events in the U.S.: UP Media's PCB Design Conferences East and West, and IPC's Designers Summit.
UP Media and IPC are competing for an admittedly small universe of attendees. And most PCB designers I know can't get approval to attend more than one conference each year. Every designer I can think of is so busy that getting time off, even for continuing education, is no easy task.
But the PCB design show season is a little less complicated this year. For years, PCB West and the Designers Summit took place in the spring, often within weeks of each other and in the same state - California. But UP Media has switched its PCB East and West around, so that PCB West takes place in Silicon Valley in September, and PCB East is in metro Chicago in May.
And in any case, the Designers Summit will be in Las Vegas at least through 2009. Got that?
Maybe managing trade shows is like selling real estate - it all comes down to location, location, location. I think IPC did well by picking Montreal for its new design conference, especially the third week in June. The Montreal Jazz Festival gets under way that week, and if I make it to the design conference, you can bet I'll find my way to the festival.
In the meantime, I hope to see you at PCB East on May 11 in Tinley Park, IL.