Making An Exhibition Of Ourselves

The a4uexpo was brilliant. Rather than repeating what’s been said elsewhere, I thought I’d give you another process story, similar to the one for the a4uAwards. If you’re considering exhibiting next year for the first time you really should and I hope this helps a bit! You probably shouldn’t read this though!

On the 19th August I emailed Claire Taylor (née Hoyland) and confirmed we wanted to exhibit. 12 emails later that same day, asking Claire many many questions, we were booked in. Never having doing anything vaguely like this in my life I didn’t know where to turn! At this point I’d like to say how much of a star Claire was from that day until the actual exhibition, we really couldn’t have done any of this without her help.

So stand #5 was booked, as a shell scheme. Job’s a good’un I figured. Hmm. Next came the graphics. Michelle at Caboodle was once again patient as a saint, as I dithered as to what it should actually have and she once again pointed me in the right direction. A few days before the deadline we sent off the graphics to Billy at Event Exhibitions who would be creating the stand boards. Here’s the design -

Obviously it had our Top Secret Project details on the two left hand panels, so we had to come up with something to cover it until after our launch. Between Michelle and Billy they worked it out using several metres of velcro and this specially designed PVC cover -

A couple of weeks before the event we contacted Camden Exhibition Services who sorted us out with a couple of nice tables and bar stools. Even this took a few hours to decide! I’ll also add that, when one is married to someone who works in the conference industry and they suggest some kind of unit or cupboard to store all the paraphernalia at the stand, you should really listen!

Here’s a few pics of our stand in the flesh -

On the set-up day we turned up to find the electricians had run our electrical connection right down the middle of our stand, between boards 3 and 4! Claire to the rescue again, she got them to stick it in the corner, out of sight.

After all that time, effort and money, our stand was dismantled and the boards chucked away before the last session of the expo had finished! I’d still happily recommend it to any merchants considering exhibiting in 2009, or even in Amsterdam.