I went to the opening keynote of ad:tech Singapore this week.
The vendor exhibition was startlingly incongruent with the stated goals of the event.
ad:tech Singapore 2009 … brings together brand advertisers, traditional & interactive agencies, portals, on-line publishers and technology providers. … ad:tech offers an unrivalled opportunity to discover new practices and technologies, and to learn how many of the great names have utilized the net, built brand recognition and immersed themselves in digital technologies. …
The two day exhibition and the two day highly engaging conference will provide you with amass of new knowledge and many new contacts. … In two days, can you become an “interactive Expert”? ...at ad:tech we’ll certainly help you try.
Aside from two larger vendors who made an attempt (Yahoo! being one) the exhibition was embarrassingly anaemic and impoverished. The photos show the typical (lack of) effort put into the majority of stands. When I took these, the exhibition was well and truly opened and running.
How did this reflect on the vendors or the industry in general? What level of care could these companies show their clients? Or perhaps as the focus is digital and interactive, the meat space stuff can be sub par?
(Or maybe I need Conjoiner implants and visual overlays to fully appreciate the unseen richness of the stands? See Alastair Reynold’s Revelation Space series.)
Unless I have missed a major point of the exhibition somewhere along the way?
The keynote was GREAT though. Took lots of notes despite the people behind me chatting and making phone calls. I will blog about these in due course.
