Tim Hermes, BGR CEO

A legitimate question…

For us publisher-types, trade shows and conferences usually have us drooling. All those potential customers and advertisers in one place, all those contacts and big-wigs we can schmooze with. I love trade shows, although in 15 years I have yet to attend the “perfect” trade show. Many have come close. For the average executive at the MOS level, I am sure trade shows hold big learning opportunities as well as networking challenges. And let’s face it – for the unemployed or soon-to-be unemployed, trade shows are even better than Linked-In!

But how many are really necessary? In the mid-90′s there was: The Atlantic show, The SCTE Cable-Tec EXPO, The NCTA (Cable) Show, the CTAM Summit, the Western Show, and the SCTE Conference on Emerging Technologies, and I’m sure I forgot a few. As the industry consolidated, and the number of operators condensed, the number of viable shows diminished, until there were four main shows. The survivors? The Cable Show, the SCTE Conference on Emerging (ET) Technologies, the CTAM Summit, and the SCTE Cable-Tec EXPO (EXPO).

These shows were grouped in co-location over the span of two weeks six months apart, with the Cable Show and ET together in Spring and EXPO and CTAM Summit in the Fall.

So who made this happen? Obviously it was the corner office guys (and gals) at each of the major associations. But as it affects technology – and our little world – was moving the two shows six months apart with the key technology show in October the right move? It’s hard to say. The NCTA seems to be the association that has the most juice right now, and what they deem as “best for the industry” seems to be where the business goes.

The real truly important question is … what aspect of the technology is most important? Is it the marketing side? Pitting cable against big V and others? The operations side? Provisioning, billing, upgrading and making the subscriber experience as positive as possible? Or the technology side. Acquiring the latest and great technology to make your system run as efficiently as possible and deliver as much speed, reliability and bandwidth as can be delivered. Depends on who you ask. The SCTE EXPO is easily the most important trade show for broadband technology as both the show floor and educational tracks focus on what matters – delivering voice, data and video. Last year, the SCTE successfully pulled off a show that they only had three months to plan. And still the traffic was strong despite the 20 inches of snow the show suffered through that week. However, like last year, this year’s show comes AFTER the top 4 MSOs – representing 85% of the total buying audience – have set their 2011 product budgets. So the question is – have these MSO buyers set their budgets and set their planned product purchases? Or do they now have the sign off to spend what they need to make their systems run better, including securing new products.

So is one is obviously better than the other? In the past, with the EXPO in June, it was perfectly positioned to fall right into budgeting time. Now being a few months late, it might be an even better fit, which is my guess. After all it’s easier to shop when you bring your checkbook. I would urge all you MSO executive personnel to make sure your key execs have the green light to attend CableConnects Fall and the SCTE EXPO. See more here: expo.scte.org

We’ll be there, for sure. And hope to see y’all there too.