Just spent two days hanging out at the PMA tradeshow.  There were plenty of exhibitors (so the tradeshow may not be dead and gone yet), but there certainly weren’t any attendees. Occasionally I’d look around for tumbleweeds.

I guess I should have suspected this would be the case when I received no less than 6 emails from PMA over the last two weeks and one phone call begging me to sign up for a free exhibits badge. I can’t recall a tradeshow more earnestly trying to get someone, anyone to show up at their show.

I was just at WPPI (Wedding and Portrait Photographers) which had great attendance. So what’s wrong with PMA? Would love to hear from you all as to why you did or did not go. It’s definitely looking like a show we will no longer do. Judging from the exhibitors we talked to, it may be the last year for many of them as well.

But… was there anything interesting?

For those of us on the pro photography side, the answer is not really. Everything of interest was announced at WPPI a couple weeks prior. One of the cool things announced at WPPI was the Canon Studio Solution software. This is a customized version of Express Digital’s software modified for their cameras and printers. Giving pro photographers a shoot to print solution that incorporates all sorts of features like client scheduling/invoicing,  sales database, image retouching/processing, and color management throughout the whole process. It’s looks very cool. We are, of course, bugging them to allow plugin developers to enhance it.

And then there was the Samsung booth. Which was either really cute or really freaking bizarre. Animated teddy bears and a ‘it’s a small world’ sort of theme? Weird. Got me talking about it, so I guess that’s sort of what they had in mind. But now I associate Samsung with strange, blue teddy bears and bad acid trips at Disneyland. Of course, that may say more about me than Samsung… but ya gotta wonder who designs these booths.