The Cole Papers, June 2004

June 2004
Vol. 15, No. 6

A capital idea -- NEXPO in Washington, D.C., promises to turn out better than expected

Out here on the front lines — where the newspaper executives call in to bemoan more layoffs and newspaper suppliers send e-mails asking if anybody is buying anything — the whole notion of moving NEXPO, the newspaper industry’s annual trade show and conference, to our nation’s capitol didn’t seem like a bright idea.

We as an industry had learned during the last decade that the best venues for meeting and discussing newspaper technology were those places that had secondary attributes. Attendance seemed pretty good in Las Vegas, and when you stepped out of the convention hall, you had casinos, shows, restaurants and even Hoover Dam to keep you occupied. Orlando, Fla., was a good venue too: you’d see people walking the trade show aisles with Mickey Mouse ears or a Disney jacket and you got the idea that maybe those conventioneers had brought their family along on the business trip.

The more pessimistic noted that places like Vegas and Orlando had cheap air fares and cheap hotels.

And while New Orleans continues to be a great convention town, it was clear that bobbing back-and-forth between Orlando and Vegas would ensure plenty of attendance.

But the Newspaper Association of America — sponsors of NEXPO — had been hit with a variety of complaints from the industry and its suppliers and one the group’s first moves was to say that in 2004 NEXPO would be in Washington, June 19-22.

I was not the only skeptical one.

Nonetheless, in the last few weeks ramping up to the show, I have seen two interesting trends:

There are many more new suppliers on the floor this year. More than one-third of the exhibitors I’ve picked as most interesting of the show are new to NEXPO. I don’t think I’ve ever had a year where one-third of the suppliers are new.

A straw poll in early spring indicated that attendance would be about the same — but chats with people in the first days of June indicate that while papers on west of the Mississippi still aren’t bringing more people, it’s clear that papers east of the Big Muddy are bringing more people and more papers are coming.

There could be two reasons for this: First, the ad recession still hasn’t gone away out here in the West. There are no more travel dollars today than there were a year ago. Second, though, is an interesting fact that most of you don’t know — the geographic center of U.S. newspapering is the Mississippi. There are just as many titles in the West as there are in the East. And while the nation’s capital isn’t a daytrip from St. Louis (for example), half the pool of potential attendees do have less ground to cover to get to the District of Columbia.

So, if Washington means more new suppliers to the industry and maybe even more people attending, then I’d have to say that having a NEXPO there may not have been such a bad idea after all.

Inside you’ll find my pick of the Top 50 exhibitors at NEXPO — the crème de la crème — the best of the best. Well, at least in the pre-press category, which I see reaching from the newsroom well into the business office, including circulation and advertising.

It was a somewhat harder set of choices to make this year, basically because of the large number of new exhibitors — I actually had to read their literature to decide whether to list them.

(Oh, and the sharp-eyed in the crowd will note that the numbering of the Top 50 stops at No. 49; that’s because two suppliers who have relatively different product lines decided to be booth buddies. So on our detailed map of the show floor, there is only one No. 41, while in the listings two companies get the No. 41 designation.)

I’ve also whittled that group down to the Top Seven, which is a list designed for the person who has only one day to attend the show.

This will be my 22nd show and it promises to be one of the most interesting. See you in D.C.

— David M. Cole, e-mail: dmc@colepapers.net

Index

Confab
Exhibits 1-16
Exhibits 17-34
Exhibits 35-50
Map
Hellbox

Top seven exhibits to visit:

17. Creative Circle Advertising Services: There’s something about the passion here that intriques me.

20. Digital Technology International: Utah meets Germany and DTI is selling business software.

29. Managing Editor Inc.: Putting the “edit” back in Managing Editor.

32. Modulo Systems Corp.: New products are completely XML-based.

34. NewsEngin Inc.:One of the few suppliers that keeps on top of technology.

39. RSiCopyright: Sell and license your content with no effort.

48. WoodWing USA: Five words — Open Source Software editorial front-end.

Photo courtesy of the
Washington, DC Convention and Tourism Corp.

Index

Top seven exhibits to visit:

From THE COLE PAPERS , June 2004, Copyright © 2004, All Rights Reserved.