Rockwell Automation Announces Attendance at 2005 Automation Fair
Rockwell Automation's John Bernaden and Steve Smith announced today that a record 14,000 people attended the just-completed Automation Fair in St. Louis, Mo.
The absolute enormity of this announcement must be made clear.
The recent ISA2005, held in Chicago, had approximately 11,500 attendees, including exhibitors.
The Chem Show, recently held in New York City, has not yet announced its attendance, but the previous show (2003) had 14,018 attendees.
National Manufacturing Week 2005 had fewer than 15,000 attendees, and is moving from McCormick Place to the much smaller Rosemount Convention Center in 2006.
Fundamentally, Automation Fair has become the largest automation trade show in North America. And it is a
private, by invitation only show.
If this doesn't set the owners of other tradeshows (yes, I mean
you! ISA...) quaking in their boots, I don't know what will.
I've been saying ever since I served as Keynotes and Plenaries Chair for ISA Expo that the show was a dying dinosaur, and ISA had better look to something else as a revenue source. Didn't listen.
Keith Larson, John Cappelletti and I created the
CONTROL AutomationXchange to provide that something else, since it was clear that ISA wasn't going to do it. Ask some of the participants if they've gotten their money's worth...in fact you can do better than that. On the website, we've put video of both end-users and vendors telling you what they get out of it...that they don't get out of a trade show.
If ISA ever hires a decent Executive Director, his major project will have to be to wean ISA from the revenue stream of an annual trade show...since if he doesn't do it, the marketplace will do it for him.
Walt
