…and you wanted to hear about National Manufacturing Week…

…or as I heard it called at the show yesterday, “National Manufacturing Two and a Half Days” or “Greater Chicagoland Manufacturing Week.”
Bottom line, moving it to the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center in Rosemount from the McCormick Place of its heyday didn’t do a lot to help National Manufacturing Week. By 2 pm, the aisles were noticeably empty. I don’t have a count on attendance at the 250+ conference sessions, but every time I walked through the conference area, it was bleakly empty too.
The show was crammed into the smaller halls, because that clearly made it look more crowded. The large hall was less than two-thirds full of exhibits, so the show didn’t even sell out the much smaller venue this year.
From an automation perspective, there was much discrete automation and motion control…but virtually no process. No major automation vendors had booths at all. National Instruments and AVG had large booths, but not a great deal of observed traffic.
I am going back today to walk the show again, and I will even be there tomorrow…for a short time.
All this does is reinforce the fact that horizontal trade shows are dead as dinosaurs. It makes me really clear on the wisdom of things like our own AutomationXchange.