Internext 2011 - Better or Worse?
 

While getting smaller each year, more business gets done on the whole.
:2 cents:

thats what everyone always says - meanwhile 98% don't even remember your name anymore 2 weeks after they promised you the best deals ever

Registration seemed like it was Broken ...

It gets so much better every year I am going to wait until 2020 and then go myself and make bank. :thumbsup

2 days more like ! :1orglaugh

I never made it outside our suite, it was packed both days. I got more business done up there than I could have asked for.

Better than the Palms. Also, being thats its free... Its very Balanced. You pay for the AVN awards if you want to go and the rest is like fuzebox has always said... Its all about the Circle Bar.

There was no actual show floor this year. A few seminars and the rest is casino mingling.

Personally, I had a great time.

I'm probably one of the few that liked the Palms... The problem with this year's setup was having people so spread out, made it harder to find people. When everyone was staying at the Palms it was much easier to find the "show people".

Shrug, I had a good time.

Agreed.

I liked the new venues, but you had to do a lot of running back and forth. It would have been nice to have more centralized to some degree. Hopefully as more shows merge, they manage to accomplish it.

yea i had a really good show, the first day i spent an hour or so looking for the show floor only to figure out that there was none. the meet market the next day was similar and way more casual than a show floor. personally i liked it and just sitting at the breakfast thing all day i met lots of people.

For Real, I'm looking forward to the usual......"Best show ever" "I got more deals done in the first day then Ive ever done before" "There was so much biz!!!"

Kristin, thank you for putting the suite together and making L3 Payments a part of it. So many people came up and thanked us. They said they did more business out of that suite :thumbsup

On top of our suite, all of my meetings took place and I even had a little bonus meeting. You know who you are and thank you for making time for me. :winkwink:

I want to make a seperate thread about it but just a quick comment before I get out of Vegas.

I think the show was much better than last 2 years in terms of attendance. We had over 2k people registered and we had a bit over 1.400 people that came and picked up their badge. So I am happy that all the effort we did to contact and convince many people to come to internext again, was so successfull. Was not an easy task and we were very happy to see such turnout.

Meet market on Monday went great, for 6 hours was packed and all the people and excibitors were very happy with it. Also the GFY party was fun and many people attended.

Also all the big companies and the people that had set up meetings on time had a great show and all i spoke were very happy. Was very positive that most business owners and decision makers attended and that helped to make the show very productive business wise.

On the other side, things didnt go so well in the organisational side. There was a mess with the seminars and the registration the first day(second day went all smooth thanks god).
Another obvious mistake was that the meet market should be done on Sunday and not on Monday,so people could have time to first meet and set up meetings for Monday. My bad especially on this...

We should have integrated the circle bar more in the event and give people a central meeting point to network. the lounge we had was too far away and made it very complicated, especially for the companies that had rented suites to come till there. Especially for newbies and people that wanted to arrange meetings on the spot and had not a schedule was complicated.

Was a hard lesson for us, vegas is not an easy place for a show, too many distractions :)

As said above, Venetian is way too big,next time we need to have everything more centralized. We spoke to the hotel to have space much closer to the actual hotel and not like now that was more close to the expo.

On the positive side, with the avn expo,ces and aff.summit was a gathering of 1000s of people these days and a great location to do business. To be honest I never seen so many business people gathered in the same place. I know many people too advantage of it and had a blast.

Bottomline, we need to work harder on many things, very happy the show was way more crowded but unhappy with some of the logistics. Ideas and help more than wellcome!

Apparently Mister Peabody was greatly missed. I appreciate that but I am simply too large and in charge to mingle amongst the minions.

I personally got a lot of business done.. I was only in two days and that was perfect! I don't know why people registered? The show was really at the circle bar and at the Top Bucks L3 Payment suite.. Neither of which required a badge.. BTW thank you to Top Bucks and L3 Payments for a wonderful suite full of food, football and fun

btw - i really appreciate the efforts AVN makes - and every other show organizer. i like attending shows and i have made very good business in the past.

but after the webmaster access i followed up with 15 or 20 people who "shook hands" with me about deals - and like 2 followed up. i am not sure why people bother to go to shows if they are not serious about business. especially when they don't even bother to reply or even willingly ignore you later (you know who you are).

[/rant]

but once again: thats not the organizers fault and the changes AVN made were long due...

It's refreshing to read this Panos, thank you! I had a very good experience with the show this year, and think next year, with the new crew at AVN will see an even better show.

Everyone that ive ever talked to said Vegas is the hardest town to do business in... can't imagine why :winkwink:

IMO, and I've said this for a while now, the show needs to incorporate smaller companies and affiliates more. Personally, me being an affiliate, I'd like to see more things targeted to what I can do to increase sales and traffic, similar to smaller programs who are trying to do the same.

I've got the feeling with the shows recently, if your not a big wig or part of a larger company, its almost like "what are you doing here?"

I think you guys have the chance to make this a much better show going forward, I'd really like to see it pick up versus going south were it seems like it has been.

Spot on.

I love reading all the people who 2 days after the show tell you how great it was for them.

The VERY VERY BEST they could of got was 2 days business. But they think we will swallow their BS.

The thing is it's easiest to say yes when face to face and then no via an email.

Until the checks cleared in your bank account you did shit.

Promises most often given.

Yes I will love you in the morning.
It doesn't hurt in there if I do it slowly.
I won't cum in your mouth.
Let's do business. :1orglaugh

This year seemed different but definitely better than the last couple of years. I do agree it was spread out but that's always going to happen in Vegas but I was running into people, doing business right up until I was jetting to airport with bags in tow and probably could have filled a day or two more with meeting with people.

I did meet a couple of people that were basically sitting around waiting for business to come to them and they were complaining about the "slowness" of the show. I think the majority realize its 2011 and if you want something to happen you have to make it happen, and those with that mindset found more than enough business to get done! :pimp

Hmm some people seem bitter.. I sold two sponsorships to our web awards, and some magazine ads, contracts are signed so no BS here I had a good show

Yes it was a great show for biz and even more for fun!

The seminars and meetings were very good too. I dont have anything negative so say.

I think they did a great job on the new format. Putting my pic in my avatar helped a ton. A lot of people approached me and vice versa.

Thanks Panos and Theo for everything. Both of you guys made this show a lot better for me than last year.

Best Avn show in the past 3 years (Maybe longer) IMO. Venetian + free + affiliate summit = a lot business to be had

Panos, yes there were problems, as you had mentioned above, but all that can be worked out for the next one. Getting advice here and from Renee on the AVN side, can be a valuable input for the betterment of the show.

Growing pains , thats what it is , the number of people who have actually shown up, is a great reflection of your commitment, to bring the show back to its former glory.

Attendance was way improved over last year, most of the comments I have heard, were on the positive side. You have posted the negative ones already.

Keep up the good work, the pics from F.U.B.A.R. will be up sometime tomorrow, so everyone can see for themselfes.:thumbsup

My only complaint is that I heard the Internext badge got you into the Affiliate Summit. If this was known, why wasn't it announced???

Agreed on all accounts.
:thumbsup

:2 cents:

many shows have claimed that they would gear more things towards affiliates. at best it's things that are geared towards 'beginner' affiliates. what about those of us who know what we're doing?

The problem with all of the Vegas shows is the event is held at a large casino open to the public. Instead of the Venetian, Palms, Mandalay Bay, Hard Rock etc. hold the show at one of the new boutique hotels and close it off to only industry similar to TPF. Something like Rumor across from The Hard Rock. Weekday hotel rates are about $80-$100. If people want to gamble, HRH is within stumbling distance with tons of good club venues. Naked chicks are a football field away at Club Paradise. But everyone is under one roof and centralized for biz. :2 cents:

Because it was not true?

I seriously doubt the cost of renting out a casino exclusively is worth it or even plausible. Its not the same as TPF.

I agree that some aspects of the show felt somewhat disorganized despite an overall good effort by the show organizers. For example the registration was confusing in terms of whether one needed an Internext badge or not if one already had an AVN badge; the first day cocktail reception got moved last minute from a nearby suite to the Palazzo; some of the seminar rooms got moved around; and the whole experience was fairly decentarlized compared to the Palms. So much so that if one didn't already know a lot of people by face it would be more difficult to meeet up with people unless one made sure to attend the breakfast & networking events or brave the smoky Circle Bar for hours each afternoon & evening.

That being said, I am glad the show was at the Sands Expo & Venetian, as I was there anyway for AEE like I have been for the previous twenty years since 1992. I had some good face time with people that I already do business with as well as some people that I had not done so before. And also got to seee a lot of old friends and business associates and pick some other people's brains about things that I was interested in. I don't spend a lot of money to attend the show so my ROI is very easy to justify if I even do one or two small deals like selling some non-exclusive Ex-GF content packages or whatever. Besides that I had a very good meeting with a new client for the first time and got more shoots lined up, so I am very happy overall. My production business is booming anyway, so I'm not deperate to close deals on the spot, and I look at the shows as paying off in the long term since people often hit me up even months later after meeting me.

I had a good time at the show, had meetings pre arranged and managed to talk to some new people, mainly at the L3 / topbucks suite, and at the circle bar.

But the show is what you make of it, and some of the bad points were mentioned. The show is so much smaller than before so it gets dwarfed being in Vegas.

I'd say the show was an improvement on last year, but still has a few things to be worked on.

It is very tough imo to have all the shows overlaping, especially for some of us that are trying to attend more than one, sure its great that its all at once in a sense that you only have to fly out once, get one room, but it does spread people thin, and I had to attend affiliate summit on Monday because I was flying home on Tuesday, so I missed out on a few oppertunities that internext was offering because of this.

All in all the shows are only what you make of them, if you expect to have people all over coming up to you and getting deals done then good luck. If you pre arrange some, and work hard meeting people then there are still deals to be done.

Says the man that didn't go to the show and has no clue.... but yes, spot on, nailed it!

If you have a solid product, it's nothing to pull $10k profit from a show, on a single deal. Plenty of business going around at shows, if you get off your ass and find it.

thats not true - you made it down to the circle bar atleast once :P

awesome suite - topbucks and l3 payments did an amazing job putting that together.

Great to meet you

Awesome party. Got to meet a great group of people ive known for years on the boards.

6 more rmonths right? :)

I think anyone who's been in this industry longer than a year already knows you'll talk to 10 people and maybe get 1 or 2 to follow through. That's why the smart ones make their appointments before the show and not hang around drinking and gambling hoping someone says "Hi, what do you do?" and get some biz out of it.

If they had turned that room where the meet market was held into a lounge it would have been better use of the space. Like set up sofas, tables and chairs where ppl can meet, talk and use that as central meeting place. Maybe even offer free coffee and non alcoholic beverages.

Rumor isn't a casino, just a hotel. I don't see why you couldn't rent the whole property.

www.rumorvegas.com

Anybody who wants to gamble can just walk across the street to Hard Rock.

I didn't do any biz but i got a couple business cards of people I'd like to hit up. Serious business

We had an amazing time. Lots of Biz done and lots of reconnections.

Other then the marathon walk to get to the seminars etc(which i am sure some us us needed anyways) It was great

the attendees that were there were there for Biz. Well and some fun. But for us its already paid for itself and looking forward to the next one.

That is true, I did stumble down there once or twice. ; )

Im with you PB... when I registered the girl told me... "OK this whole floor is open to you for Internext" So when I went looking around... what did I find? Other people wondering where this show floor was :winkwink:

Amongst that I had a great time :pimp

I had a great meeting with Chris Mallick...

It looks like I will be doing a lot of business with epassporte this year... :thumbsup





.

You can do better than that...

I keep hearing Disorganized, if that’s true they are just shooting themselves in the foot. It will be harder to get people to return next year.