Scoble brings me back down to earth

I had seen a post on the AMD virtual trade show a few days ago and got really intrigued by the thought.  I have been personally involved in orchestrating a few of our trade show presences and always have marvelled at the waste of money they seem to be.  In many cases the few we stil attend today are driven by fear (what if all our competitors go?) than any desire to do business (let’s go have interesting conversations with some customers!).
When I saw the AMD announcement, I thought: “that’s great.  It may be a big outlay at first, but this could ease the transition away from the physical trade show model.”  What I missed, of course is that you can’t replace something that’s fundamentally broken with something virtual…or you’ll just end up with something that is virtually broken.
The reality today is that there are much more effective (more meaningful conversations for less cost) ways to engage with potential customers: blogs, vlogs, podcasts, and even “meat-ups” when done correctly are way better than any trade show I have ever been to.  The key question is how to affect the transition…there are still a lot of trade shows and maybe more important for a transition a lot of trade show companies.  If I were a booth company, or a signage company I would be trying to figure out what business I am really in…and trying to learn a thing or too about how to move my customers to this new way of doing things.  Those that figure out how to do that will still be here in 20 years…those that don’t will be the equivalent of type writer ribbon sales peoples.
Two corporate announcements, but what about ROI? « Scobleizer – Tech Geek Blogger