What ATrade Show
by Scott A. Sumner
www.golfingnews.ca
Trade Shows have always been interesting to me. I think it is something about meeting so many people who are enthusiastic about their product or services in such a short time. If fact our company produced 5 of our own trade shows over a five year period and I got to learn the challenges of actually putting everything together from start to finish. Trade shows seem to have an excitement about them and last week I had the opportunity to see the 2008 PGA Merchandise Show in Orlando, Florida. This show had over 550 exhibitors covering a million square feet of space with 10 miles of show aisles to walk all at the huge Orlando Convention Centre. This show is unique in that there are 45,000 PGA professionals and some 500 media who come from all over the world to attend. The event is only for these groups and the general public can not attend. The event started with a huge Demo day with many stations where you could try out new products. If you had a interest in golf this was the place to be and provided me with tons of information and samples of products I can talk about this season in our golf publication, Northwestern Ontario Golfing News.
It was a real treat to stay at the Ginn Reunion Resort during my stay. This 2000 acre plus development has three beautiful golf courses designed by Nicklaus, Watson and Palmer. It has thousands of high end villas and homes which you can rent out. My place to stay at Ginn Reunion was a 1500 square foot 3 bedroom Villa overlooking the Watson course which I got to play. The villa was spectacular complete with flat screenTVs, stainless steel appliances, granite counter tops etc., etc. This is the place to stay when in Orlando.
It was fun to see my first NBA basketball game with the Orlando Magic playing the Portland Trailblazers. Lots of excitement there for sure. Also the theme parks are incredible and I had the chance to see Universal Studios, The Island of Adventure as well as Disney Hollywood. At Disney Hollywood the event of showing stunt drivers film sequences for an action movie was excellent and seen by a stadium of a few thousand people.Also I saw the Jimmy Neutron show at Universal which was fun.
You have to be prepared to walk miles but you will see so much at a huge trade show. Be sure to check out what the city has to offer as well. The weather was cool during my stay at Orlando but the experiences hot!
