In January the Webclicks team hit 3 US trade shows and here is a review of each of the shows, XBIZ in Los Angeles, Internext and Affiliate Summit West in Las Vegas, from Brad our VP of Sales helping you decide if you should attend next year.
XBIZ was up first and held at the Andaz Hotel in West Hollywood. After checking in and taking a day to get over jet-lag I registered and hit up the speed networking. To be honest it wasn’t the most engaging speed networking event I have attended as the room was quite small which made it very hard for the roughly 60 participants to hear each other. For a network looking to drum up more business the participants were not as good of a fit as some of the other shows.
The rest of the show was spent networking at the bar, which seemed to bring the most results, and attending a few seminars which seemed to be aimed at beginners and up and coming performers. After speaking with some of the other companies there they described XBIZ as a warm up show for Vegas and I can now see why.
Internext in Vegas was put up at the Hard Rock Hotel just off the main strip. The show is a lot bigger than XBIZ and it seemed like everyone and anyone attended. The show was mainly spent networking at the bars and on the showroom floor along with attending events. In terms of business it was quite an interesting show giving us access to people and companies who don’t attend the European or Asian shows. We created quite a lot of business relationships from this show and plan to build on them, we will definitely be back next year.
One thing to note about Internext is the location. Held at the Hard Rock Hotel it does make it a hassle when having to attend multiple meetings a day at different hotels located on the strip and not to mention the cab fares going back and forth. When attending plan your meetings smart and if most of your meetings are away from the show hotel look to get a room on the strip.
Last but not least we attended the Affiliate Summit West held at the Paris Hotel. This show is aimed towards affiliates and exactly the demographic of people we were trying to reach. Having all the major networks setup with a booth made it easy to walk around and have a talk about how we can work together. This proved very useful and has sparked some interesting relationships for us to work on in the coming months.
Webclicks did not have a booth this year as it was more of a scout mission to see what to expect. Next year we will be attending with a booth as it will allow us to better interact with the affiliates who attend.
To sum it up, the trip was a success and something we will be looking forward to next year.
Oh and lastly, be sure to prepare your body for an intense week of work where you don’t see much daylight and doing business in smoke filled casinos.