Will industry rally in Nuremberg?
24 February 2009
Last week I waxed lyrical about a very positive event in the UK, Southern Electronics (It's like winning the Cup!). This week I am turning my attention to the continent and much bigger fare.
I’m not going to go on about Southern Electronics again except to say that it was a small, successful show with broad appeal across many industries – small things to all men, you might say. Next week, however, sees a more focussed exhibition that is an order of magnitude bigger. Sadly not on British shores but it is only a short hop over to Nuremberg in Germany for the delights of Embedded World. Flights only take just over an hour and a half from London airports and it therefore becomes a viable day trip – albeit a long day.
In a year without Electronica, Embedded World is probably as significant an event as happens in Europe. It will be interesting to see how well it goes. All of the major players in the electronics industry will be there, although there remains the suspicion that events taking place this winter and spring will be filled with exhibitors who booked up their stands last year, maybe during or straight after the corresponding event in 2008. If the decision to exhibit had been made in December, January or February then maybe more companies would have decided not to participate. The full effects of this slowdown on exhibitions might therefore not really be felt until later in the year, although these events will then have time to harvest any potential exhibitors who are experiencing any green shoots of recovery – or indeed the silent minority who are not slowing down as much as everyone tells them they should be!
But back to Nuremberg. In 2008, 17,341 visitors from 61 countries came to see 675 exhibitors from 28 countries, while 1250 people joined in the conference programme. There are in the region of 14% more exhibitors for 2009 and the space they take up will be 10% more, so expect to see a bigger show. Whether it turns out to be busier or not depends partly, from a negative point of view, on tighter restrictions on company travel budgets and partly, being more positive, on how interesting the event promises to be.
I think in this respect that exhibition organisers are like everyone else; they need to try harder to keep their customers (exhibitors and visitors in this case) on side, and Embedded World’s offering has much to commend it. The first criteria is to provide a good exhibition and from the contents of my inbox it would appear that many of the leading players in the industry are holding back some major announcements so that they can make a big splash at the show. All the major semiconductor companies will be there and virtually all of them have something new to say.
The second requirement for a good event is to add the educational element and it looks like the conference programme has plenty of well-targeted content. It covers all areas of embedded system development. In addition to hardware, software and tools, the conference will for the first time also be devoting itself to themes such as green electronics or project management and thus picking up current trends and developments.
In their lectures, experts and specialists from the embedded community will provide answers to the most pressing matters and ensure that the embedded systems developers are best prepared for the challenges of tomorrow. With 24 sessions and 20 classes, the programme at the Embedded World conference once again promises to be an interesting and lively congress event tailored to the requirements of the development engineers.
It all looks like interesting stuff and I hope it goes well – every positive indicator help build the momentum that the industry has lost over the past six months and exhibitions are the most visible indicators we have.
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