Rich Trenholm

Tuesday 12 February 2008, 2:01pm

Must the (trade) show go on?

There's no business like show business... trade show business, that is. Right now, our man in Barcelona, Andrew Lim, is getting his hands on the mobile phone manufacturers' 2008 ranges at Mobile World Congress. Barely a week before that it was PMA 2008, a carnival of cameras, and before that it was CES 2008, a riot of gadgety goodness.

Hold on, you say. This is the 21st century. Fly a bunch of journalists, distributors and ubergeeks half-way round the world -- with the attendant carbon bootprint -- to converge on a trade floor the size of my postcode, then hope that the best gear is highlighted and not just the stuff with the biggest PR budget for booth babes and bar tabs? How is that the best way to do things?

Besides, what happens at 9.01am on day one of every show is the relevant PR companies around the world fire off the relevant press releases. Which means bloggers in bedrooms have the new products online before the bloated hacks in their five-star hotels have even brushed their teeth.

So will blogging kill the trade show? Probably not, because corporate hospitality -- communal drunkenness and/or strippers -- greases the wheels of the tech world just like any other business. Only kidding...

More seriously, for distributors, and for us Cravers, it's all about getting hands, ears and eyes on new products. We'll take smart over first every time, so we'll leave the recycling of press releases -- with all their Arbitrary Capitalisation and Uniquely Amazing Super-Awesome Hyperbole -- to other sites, and keep the quality comment coming in from all over the world. And Birmingham.

Yes, I'm off to Focus On Imaging in Brum, 24-27 February 2008. There'd better be strippers...

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