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The place for comms people to network |
Networks Telecom exhibition 2002 at the NEC in Birmingham (countdown to success)
As our position strengthend month on month, we felt it important to shout about commsplace in the loudest way possible, to exhibit at the world famous spotlight for everything Networks & Telecomms.
We had heard bad things about the show and had decided not to exhibit due to a reduced number of exhibitors and potential visitors so, on the first day of the show we went along to see for ourselves.
Yes, it has to be said that it was a lot smaller that previous years and yes it did seem to be quieter but that said we discovered hoards of people gathered around monitors on stands watching... yeah, you've guessed it, the football. Once the match had finished then the place came alive again and we saw that all was not as it seemed.
Now begins a race against time to achieve the impossible.....
16:30 Tuesday (T minus 17 hours 30 minutes)
We hurried to the show organiser to ask about exhibiting. They naturally assumed we were talking about 2003 and offered all the help they could. When we explained it was for 2002 ie. TOMORROW they were astonished.
We can honestly say the organisers & NEC staff were amazing, the words "not possible" or "too late" or "can't be done" were never mentioned. At one stage there must have been 10 different people on walkie-talkies all over the NEC talking about this mad company called commplace trying to book a stand for the last two days of a three day show.
We looked at schematics of the show and picked an ideal position that a company hadn't turned up for and then the stress started.
Furniture, literature, displays, stand personnel, computers, and oh yes ISDN. Without ISDN what could we exhibit, we are a website!!.
On the phone they got to the on-site BT engineers who couldn't do anything until the show closed.
We wouldn't commit to the show unless we could definitely have the ISDN.
17:50 Tuesday (T minus 16 hours 10 minutes)
The BT engineers met us at the stand along with numerous organisers. Unfortunately BT could tell whether it would be possible to fish the ISDN through so they set about the task of trying.
18:30 Tuesday (T minus 15 hours 30 minutes)
We drove from the NEC in the knowledge that BT could get an ISDN line to the stand and therefor, commsplace would be at the show ready to open their doors at 10:00 the next morning.
Now was the hard part. Organising leaflet, show displays, stand personnel T-shirts for personnel, the list was endless and the task seemed impossible.
The printers opened up specially for us and started designing and printing all of the show material including 3000 leaflets, posters, T-shirts & business cards.
02:30 Wednesday (T Minus 7 Hours 30 minutes)
The printers finally turned the key in their door and drove round to us to deliver the work they had done. Meantime we were sorting out everything else. The things that you would easily forget and would cause serious problems like staplers, PDQ credit card machine, ISDN Router etc.
03:30 Wednesday (T Minus 6 hours 30 minutes)
Off to bed in the knowledge that the earliest we can be inside the NEC is 08:00
07:30 Wednesday (T Minus 2 hours 30 minutes)
Arrived at the NEC waiting for access it finally hit us. We sat exhausted yet so focussed on the task in hand this was to be the way that we were to spend the next 48 hours.
08:00 Wednesday (T Minus 2 hours 00 minutes)
We finally got in and watched as the most efficient team of electricians, telecomms people, stand erectors and what seemed to be the whole organisers office pulled together to ensure the stand was ready for opening at 10:00.
The funiture people arrived with the tables and the AV companiy brought a big plasma monitor.
The ISDN was connected and the display literature was arranged.
PC's fired up, log on to website and......
Did we do it?........
10:00 Wednesday 26th June 2002
commsplace is the newest exhibitor at Networks Telecom Europe 2002
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The organisers were so impressed that they interview us about the way we had gone from visitor to exhibitor literally overnight. This will be shown of marketing material and on their website. They are also sorting out a press release which is good publicity for all concerned.
Anyway if you've got this far then thanks for reading. We got some great feedback from visitors and to say that commsplace has only been around since November 2001, we were overwhelmed by the amount of people (mostly end users) that were aware of the director and use it.
We were so impressed that we have booked up for next year so please come and see us.
The Directors
commsplace