Shows this week

Wow, do we have a variety here at work this week. I work at a rather large convention and expo facility, with dozens of small meeting rooms and two large halls, which can be subdivided into smaller sections. The biggest hall upstairs is about 800,000 square feet in size and can be cut into quarters. The smaller hall downstairs is about half that size, 400,000 square feet. We sometimes have big shows that take up all the available space, and sometimes little conferences that just use one small room, and everything in between.

This week we have the upstairs hall split up – the ceiling is forty feet high, but there are ‘air walls’ composed of movable panels that hang from tracks in the ceiling and cut the room into pieces. There are three shows moving in today: one on scrap booking, one on security and one on orthopedics and prosthetics. Except for our January mix of electronics geeks and porn actresses I couldn’t imagine a more diverse combination. Though I suppose we could throw in toys in the last space and then fill downstairs with low price clothes or jewelry to further add to the people flow.

It’s different to walk through the prosthetics show and see piles of artificial limbs scattered around the booths. With what’s going on overseas I guess this is a hot topic in military hospitals now. The scrap booking show is the largest – the main floor is still only one quarter of the big hall, but they also have twenty or so conference rooms where they are giving seminars in the latest trends. These shows are not open to the public, but just for people ‘in the trade’. That might include hospitals and doctors for the limbs and surgery stuff, stores for the scrap books, and security companies and hotels for the security stuff. But if you want to get into the scrapping one Dana I can get a visitor's pass.

None of these shows have anything I would need (well, at least not yet) but it is interesting to walk around today and look at all the work involved in setting up, and then tomorrow to walk around the booths and see the sales pitches and supplies.

I took a video of the bridal stuff, as soon as I can find a place to post it I'll put it up.