Barcelona | The ISE exhibition center is almost packed to its fullest capacity. More and more exhibitors and freeloaders are showcasing their solutions outside of Fira Barcelona in surrounding hotels and extraordinary locations. A trend that makes ISE visits more complicated.
Evening events taking place in and around the ISE exhibition center have been a tradition for 20 years. Barcelona’s bars, restaurants, and clubs – as for the famous Peerless AV Party – are packed during ISE and are an integral part of trade show networking. This also includes events in extraordinary locations such as the historic summer residence Can Magi, where this year’s Samsung Roundtable took place with over 250 partners from Germany alone.
PPDS invited selected partners to the Red Bull Alinghi Team’s America’s Cup Base in the port of Barcelona. Here, the Philips licensee showed new digital signage solutions for hotels and restaurants while entertaining the guests. The main attraction was of course the tour around the America’s Cup racing boat.
SignageOS traditionally invites guests to FC Barcelona’s home match. This year not in the Camp Nou but in the Olympic Stadium, the Blaugrana’s alternative venue during the renovation.
Freeloaders & Co
Other digital signage market players not present at ISE organize customer conferences and product presentations in neighboring hotels around the exhibition center. Without the publicity of the trade fair, these events often only reach a few handfuls of participants.
The motives differ: former ISE exhibitors hope to save costs and forego the visibility and new leads of a leading global trade fair. Other service providers and companies without ISE experience prefer testing the exhibition from the outside.
Anyone who is not present is not relevant
In the end, each company decides for itself whether it is worth officially taking part in ISE. For end customers who are new to the topic of digital signage – almost every second visitor to ISE is a B2B end customer – only companies that are visibly represented on the world’s leading digital signage trade fair show are relevant. Whether with an individual stand or as a partner – you just have to be visible and searchable in the ISE directory.