An average day at the Outdoor Show - 20 Jul 2007
I’ve received a dozen emails from Laneo members since I’ve started blogging about The Outdoor Show. The one question that keeps popping up is – “what are you doing during the 4 days?”
Well, first of all I traveled here by train because I do 95% of my travels by train (for obvious eco-footprint reasons). I left Paris on Wednesday at 07h24 on the TGV and changed in Zurich. From there I took an ICE to Romanschorn where I caught a ferry over Lac Constance to Friederischafen. From there I jumped another train to Lindau, where I arrived at my hotel at 17h45. While Lindau is only about 35kms from Friederischafen, it added about 1 hour each morning and 45 min each evening to my agenda. Basically my days start a 06h00 and finish (after emails and blog posts) around 23h00.
The average day consists of back-to-back meetings (with our partners and prospects) from 09h00–18h00 and filled in between with appointments that I make on the fly with people I meet while walking between stands. The show is a great opportunity to discover new companies – which I do every time I visit. In fact just today, I met with 3 manufacturers for the first time.
In all, I plan to meet around 45-50 companies while I’m here and 75% of them are companies I know from previous visits. I don’t have time to sit down for lunch but lucky enough for me, most of the exhibiting companies offer generous light snacks and drinks. So it’s a lot like visiting Spain, – tapas all day long!
The most demanding aspect of these shows is the variety of languages you have to be able to speak during the day and on a moment’s notice. It causes some hilarious errors!
All in all it is far from anything resembling a relaxed corporate retreat and more intense than I think anyone can imagine; but it is one of the main reasons that Laneo continues to grow. Each year I come here in the relentless quest to get more companies to support us. And each year I make more and more progress. It’s pretty much like training for a competition or climbing a mountain.
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