As I wrote in my last post, the trade show at the NADITA conference was quite an experience. I had never set up a booth at a trade show, so every step along the way was a new learning experience.

Remember I said that I was invited to the conference two weeks before it took place, but only a week before it started I was told that as a vendor I had to set up a booth. That meant I only had a week to design the booth, as well as design and print marketing material such as brochures, banners, and promotional pens.

But it all really started when I got there. From past experience, basically from shows where I had been an organizer during college, I thought that with each booth I would get at least a table. I had my projector and my laptop, and also had printed a couple of big banners to have them standing on each side.

On Monday evening, in the networking cocktail I met one of the organizers, and when I introduced myself, he asked me if I had talked to Sam (the guy in charge of setting the vendor fair for NADITA) already, to which I said no. He urged me to email him that night and call him early in the morning because my booth only came with the three walls. So I emailed Sam that night and in the morning I had an email with a 40-page guide on preparing for a show.

Basically, if I needed anything I couldn’t provide myself, I had to rent it at ridiculously high prices. To start I needed a table on which to put the projector, brochures, business cards, and so on. There went around $175 (the table was I think $140 plus a 22% service charge). After the show I ended with a bad backache for standing around 4 hours, just because I did not want to pay another $150 for a chair.

If I needed anything related to electricity, audio, video or computing equipment, I had to rent it with Encore, which I understand is the hotel’s company that sets up conference rooms for trade shows.

At first I knew I needed electricity. So I filled up the order form like this: around $150 for one 110v outlet, $120 for one hour of labor (the minimum) and tax. It ended up in just under $300 for having electricity in my booth.

On Wednesday morning I came early  to the conference room to see my booth and start setting it up. It looked something like this:

booth_before1

One thing I knew immediately I needed was a projection screen. I called an Encore salesman and he immediately set that up for me ($60 plus service charge).

I also thought about asking for a 21-inch computer monitor to demo my products. It cost about $175 (come on, you can buy one for less than that!) and I was not sure it was worth it. After asking a couple of people who told me that it was not necessary, I went with my gut and asked for it.

At the end, the booth looked like this:

booth_after1

Given the lack of experience, short notice and limited resources, I think I did a good job. It definitely was not most flashy booth in the room, but still looked decent.

Other things I could have rented for my booth were a projector for $350 (luckily I took mine from here) or a 128 kbps internet connection for $400 (256 kbps for $600). The prices were so insanely high that they made laugh.

Overall it was a great experience. I learned a lot and made a few interesting contacts. We will see if something serious comes out from them.