I’m a big fan of industry events. That goes back to my earliest days in the industry in the mid to late 1980’s. I still long for that one-stop networking experience of the old NOMDA and BTA shows. You don’t really get that anymore, at least not the way it was in the ‘80s.
Personally, I’d love to attend more industry events than I can squeeze into my schedule. The challenge is the time and resources it takes to travel to these events, especially when you’re a small business. Consider what November has in store for me—a trip to Orlando for the Sharp and Toshiba dealer meetings and a trip to Las Vegas for Konica Minolta’s dealer meeting. I wish I had time to attend the Business Imaging Expo in December, that sounds like it’s going to be an excellent event, but somebody has to make the donuts.
I’m not the only one who has to make some difficult choices as to should I stay or should go now. But there’s plenty of folks who have figured out how to juggle the demands of running a business and business travel. Between BTA regional events, dealer meetings, conferences such as ITEX, Photizo Transform, and the Business Imaging Expo to name a few, I envy the dealers who have the time to travel to these events to further their education and network with peers, partners, and prospective partners.
My New Year’s resolution, and I concede it’s way too early to toss around New Year’s resolutions, is to figure out how to be in two places at the same time in 2014 and still get everything I need to get done, done.
I look forward to seeing some of you in Orlando and Las Vegas in November.
Thanks for reading.
