PC Retail

Since I've been aware of Channel Expo the post mortem by attendees and even exhibitors is often tinged with pessimism.

Part of this is down to genuinely identified room for improvement, other parts seem to exist simply because it's easier to be negative about something than be positive about it.

However that is not to ignore the complaints that made their way to my notepad during and after the show. Some make legitimate points. While opinions varied as to how busy the show was overall (some seemed pleased with the turnout, others less so), much more common was the belief that the second day was significantly quieter than the first, leading some to tell me they would prefer a one-day event.

This is just one of the ideas I heard, and there were many more suggestions banded around the show floor, the less repeatable of which involved the rent-a-models some exhibitors adorned stands with.

The important point to realise is that a process of refinement is to be expected of any event that hopes to effectively represent something as wide reaching and fast moving as the UK PC and technology trade. As long as the legitimately useful feedback is identified and acknowledged, and the unhelpful naysayers that claim we don’t need a trade show in the UK are ignored, the show can only get better.

On the other hand, you might think that the time of large-scale, lavish collaborative events are over. If so, your name certainly wouldn’t be Nvidia. There’s booking a big hall for your respective shin-dig, and then there’s renting out an entire city.

We'll have to wait until August to see what the international PC and technology communities make of the almost obscenely extravagant affair that is Nvision but I for one find it refreshing that in a time of reigned-in marketing budgets and pessimism seemingly towards events in general, there are still those out there who believe in the idea of brazenly showing off to the world the technology the drives our trade.