Paul Ziliak, a partner at Des Plaines, Ill.-bases Xkzero, who admitted, “I was a skeptic” before the show began.“The floor lay out is 1,000-percent better than last year. Traffic has been excellent,” said Phil Smith, national sales manager for The Woodlands, Texas-based Kerr Consulting. “There are a number of third-party vendors that didn’t come, I wish had come.” Some others said flatly, without wanting their names attached, that traffic was good or so-so, but not worth the extra money. Sage got an attendance of 5,000 (most didn’t seem to think that number was solid) by dropping the attendee fee to $99 and hiking the cost of booth space. The plain vanilla small booths went for $8,000 a pop. However, it seemed there were fewer vendors than last year and some said there was noticeable drop off from those shown this year’s initial floor map. Overall, I’ll go with at least 60 percent happy as an educated guess. Expense-wise, don’t forget the Vegas overhead. Ziliak had to work and got room service. A plate of pasta and a small salad was $55, gratuity not included.
SAGE SUMMIT FLOOR TRAFFIC GOOD Featured
Trying to assess the prevailing opinions of exhibitors on a trade show floor is always tricky. The ones that are happy are far more willing to talk than those that aren’t. But my conclusion about this year’s Sage Summit is that a majority were pleased with traffic and feel that it justified higher prices for booths. “Getting people here is the important thing,” said Jeff Roth, CEO of SWK Technologies of Livingston, N.J. Roth was willing to forgo some frills that had been previously offered for higher traffic and said the traffic at his company’s booth had been very good.
