Issue #142 | Apr. 18, 2008 | by Andy Kowl

This week we are coming to you live from RFID Journal Live! in sunny Las Vegas. By popular consensus, those of us who have been attending RFID conferences and trade shows of every stripe for years agree this is the best attended show in RFID history.

This is the Year of Solutions. Nobody here is “selling RFID” anymore. Everyone is selling business solutions. Sure, it just so happens all of these solutions revolve around RFID technology.

Everyone has figured out that companies had little interest in buying RFID. But they are eager as hell to save money; become more efficient; protect themselves from counterfeiting, theft and security breaches; get a handle on access to their facilities and provide customers with product improvements. If those things require RFID, bring it on!

The best news is that from all corners, the mists of gloom have dissipated. Vendors are doing business. Pilots are turning into full-fledged implementations. Implementations are rolling out across enterprises. In these times of possible recession, this is one industry where business is on the rise.

Not that anyone feels unaffected by client budgets; but in an odd way this could be one of the success stories amidst a flatlining economy. I’ll leave that to the analysts to throw their brilliant numbers and percentages at you in coming months. I am reporting what companies are actually telling me.

I was tempted to mention some product introductions that have caught my eye; but I still have to walk the floor of the show today and have no interest in being collared by all of those I do not mention. So I will tell you about the one I am most excited about.

After months of talking about it, we at RFID Switchboard have introduced our new product, RFID Trade Mart. The new Trade mart is now the only website dedicated not to using RFID successfully, as Switchboard is, rather it is about selling RFID successfully. At this time I shall let it speak for itself and ask you to give us a visit, if you sell or intend to sell RFID technology. There are many ways to get there, but try this for now: www.rfidsb.com/tm Let me know what you think, would you please? (my2cents@rfidsb.com)

After years of head-to-head competition with RFID World, which wisely was moved to this fall rather than the annual mega-shows occurring the same month each year, Journal Live! has been anointed the must-attend by the industry. What is fascinating to me is after years of World beating Journal in attendance – by my count not theirs since show producers are notoriously generous in their announced attendance numbers – that after last year’s major tilt the other way there was a sea change in attitude of exhibitors towards the Journal.

Who am I to count numbers without an RFID reader? It just so happens this week’s show is at The Venetian here, the same fine hotel I used to produce an annual (and still running) conference in the credit union business. The main hall where keynotes and general sessions take place is the same ballroom we had ours. It is not for me to announce my comparative count; but I have a pretty good idea.

Thank goodness the old RFID show glut is over. The number of pure RFID shows, whether horizontal or vertical in subject approach, has calmed down to a reasonable handful. Being in the information business, I knew from the beginning this would happen. It had to. Once a technology is better known by those who need to know it, there are only so many shows about that technology needed. To give an extreme example, what kind of attendance do you think there would be at a show about desktop computers? We ain’t there yet, but the RF-What? nature of things has receded.

P.S. Happy Birthday Monica!