Expanding the Tent As AFCI and NAMTA prepare to present their first collocated trade show, we spoke to AFCI Executive Director Peter Finn about his expectations for the show and the future of the industries. AMR: A collocated tradeshow of these two creative products
What kind of feedback are you getting about the collocation? Do you expect there will
associations was a long time coming. Why did it seem to
be a lot of interest in the other industry’s products?
make sense this year?
Great feedback thus far and, yes, I think part of the advantage in the collocation is that buyers are exposed to a greater catalog of products and connections. Our goal was to present our members with a greater variety of products, and in partnership with Namta, expand the tent.
Peter Finn: I think this happened in part because NAMTA’s Executive Director Leah Siffringer and I had an initial meeting in 2019 about future opportunities. It was clear from the beginning that we both saw a lot
What kind of feedback are you getting on
of upside for our members and the broader community to pull together a collocated conference
the virtual nature of the show? What kinds of bells and whistles will they experience?
and show. Due to the restrictions around in-person meetings in 2020 and 2021, the opportunity presented itself for us
Will there be a place for this virtual experience post-pandemic?
to collocate virtually – essentially accelerating our plan to collocate Creativation and Art Materials World.
Great questions. This is a total paradigm shift for our members and attendees. Typically,
How many AFCI-member exhibitors do you expect
the Creativation conference and tradeshow is very much a touch and feel type experience, so to
to have? How about buyers? How will you measure attendance? Our goal for the virtual conference and show, Creativation+ featuring Art Materials World, is to have more than 100 exhibitors and more than 750 attendees – many of them buyers.
go virtual makes it hard to replicate that kind of tangible quality. That said, we have encouraged exhibitors to distribute products to attendees ahead of Creativation +. The bells and whistles of the virtual meeting platform that we think will appeal most are the AIpowered matchmaking, interactive booth capabilities with video and chat, 30 hours of education, and 50 hours of on-demand content following the virtual event. We are hosting the event on a virtual platform that is pretty dynamic and is being used by a number of larger-
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scale events, including SXSW. I do think virtual is here to stay, but never as a replacement for in-person meetings. I think we will see more hybrid or blended meetings in the future – where a year-round virtual program will complement the in-person experiences.
