Issue #24 | April 14, 2005

Your roving reporter has just returned from the RFID Journal Live conference in Chicago, the latest in some hundred or so shows I've attended in the past several years.

As this industry swiftly moves from infancy through childhood and into adolescence, I'm noticing that each of our social gatherings, i.e., trade shows, is revealing a unique personality. I admit, this is not a formal conference-market analysis, but, hey, that's why this is called "Lou's News and Views". Here's my take on the emerging character of RFID conferences.This was my third RFID Journal Live. Most of the attendees were resellers of something RFID related. A small percentage of attendees were end users. The majority were what I consider to be RFID veterans. With so many vendors and so few end users, the focus was on building partner-relationships. How can company A work with company B? That meant there were meetings everywhere: in the bar, in hotel suites, in the lobby, even in the men's room.

So what's the defining characteristic of the show? RFID Journal Live seems to have become the show you must attend if you are an RFID vendor or everyone else will wonder about you. Every industry has one. One RFID services provider was conspicuously absent and a rumor started that they may be going out of business, regardless of the truth. Maybe they had simply decided that the returns from the previous year weren't worth it. It's like taxes: you don't feel a return, but ya gotta pay the piper. Of course, we signed up for a bigger booth next year.

RFID World in Dallas was the largest RFID-specific show I've been to thus far. The majority of attendees were commercial companies that knew what RFID is, but were still researching and learning. (See Lou's News and Views #18)

The DoD Summit had, as you would except, a strong military and government presence. The focus is predominately on supply chain applications. It seemed as if some attendees were 'ordered' to be there. Many among the crowd methodically traveled from booth to booth asking the same questions: What do you do? How big is your company? What contract vehicles do you have? There wasn't a lot of "outside the box" thinking going on. (Lou's News and Views #17)

EPC Global has the honor of hosting the RFID elite. It's 'members only' and the technicians that rarely venture forth from the lab, brave the sunlight to attend EPC Global. You better put on your propeller cap and don your pocket protector if you plan to attend one of their conferences.

Frontline originally was the mother of all shows. The show covers a broad spectrum of topics. But the show seems to have peaked a year or more ago, I don't know why. The last show was noticeably down RFID-wise.

The Wal-Mart supplier conferences are a group of people that most frequently say, "The only reason we're here is because we have to." Yet, I've recently started seeing representatives from companies that attended the first and second Wal-Mart meeting at other shows with a whole new outlook on RFID. One company told me that after a successful pilot project, they may be able to find some use for RFID technology. There, that wasn't so painful now, was it?

Finally, the National Association of Manufacturers started to see the benefits of a specialized RFID show, and co-hosted RFID 2004 last summer with our own RFID Operations magazine last year. This brought a strong turn-out of people with specific RFID-related objectives, and they were almost all RFID virgins - to the delight of the exhibitors in attendance. It's likely the crowd will grow for RFID 2005 coming this fall in Las Vegas.

Written by Louis Sirico
Copyright ? 2005 Louis Sirico