Old politics won’t spoil NEW show
11 May 2010
While I can’t help myself commenting on our political situation, the big news in the UK electronics is the ‘re-launch’ of National Electronics Week in Birmingham.
It’s a funny time for British industry. With the world’s financial sector still twisting uncomfortably whenever any country or economy feels the pinch, there is a dark cloud hanging over everyone in a grim reaper type fashion. What if the credit crunch was just the overture to the real McKoy?
What if the world woke-up to the fact that living on unfettered credit was unsustainable and rather than talking about a few cuts to public services we started facing up to a consumer-led crisis where nobody has enough money to buy anything? Real austerity measures on personal and national levels would be the norm and true recession would hit us all.
Maybe that is a bit too far down the doomsday scenario, but these are unquestionably troubled times and it is a time when we could most do with a strong and stable government. There was an argument to say that a hung parliament might be a good thing for the long term. It would provide a new breed of consensus-based politics that, due to the inevitable electoral reform, would become the norm for the future.
However, this is not a good time for that. Now is a time to get the markets off our collective back and keep a low profile in the international financial arena. At the time of writing the shape of the new Conservative/LIb Dem coalition is coming into focus in terms of personnel, and soon we hopefully will be entrusted with the details of the policy plans so we can find out what compromises have been made on our behalf - if we had wanted Lib Dem policies we would have voted for them at the election. I foresee uncomfortable months ahead as power struggles emerge, promises are delayed and individual political integrities are tested. Not ideal when looking for the strong and stable!
Hopefully better news for the UK’s electronics industry – and the real-world does have a reassuring habit of rising above the short-comings of our leaders – at next week’s National Electronics Week (NEW). This will be held for the first time at Birmingham’s NEC, which gives it a bit of a feel of a homecoming for those in the electronics production side as the old Nepcon spent many year’s at this venue.
However, when I recently spoke to Claire Saunders, the Exhibition Director, she was keen to stress that NEW is not a Nepcon replacement: “NEW has raised the bar for what electronics professionals can expect from UK events. Of course, you’d expect me to say that! But I think that the statement will hold up if you speak to many of our supporting exhibitors, visitors and trade associations. Since the very beginning, we have been incredibly focused on providing dedicated support for every market sector here in the UK, providing a dynamic platform from which they can do business. However, we’re also firm believers in the responsibility of events to provide educational opportunities that will foster innovation and ultimately, the development of our industry. Our capacity to combine all of this in one platform really sets us apart from everything that’s gone before us. But, above all this, I believe it’s our status as a true industry event, run by people dedicated to it, that makes NEW unique. We are, and always will be, an industry event shaped by participant feedback and dedicated to participant success.”
The full interview is posted here on our sister site EMTWorldWide, and in it Claire goes on to outline the relevance of the show for design engineers as well as the educational opportunities at the event. For the record, National Electronics Week is on 18th and 19th May 2010 at the NEC and full details can be found on the website.
So maybe having not had the best of luck in terms of launching a new show just as the recession was taking grip, it could be that in its third year NEW could come of age. With a generally more optimistic mood percolating through industry, it may be that NEW is ideally placed to provide the forum/meeting place/market place that the UK electronics industry has missed out on for some time.
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