I don't know exactly how many years it's been since I've been to the Hyatt on Wacker Drive, but I do remember that the last time I was there I attended a Chicago Bulls basketball game, starring Michael Jordan (Thank you again, Mr. Fay).
When I entered the hotel's revolving front doors, I had forgotten the vast open-air atrium in the Hyatt. While riding up the escalators to the check-in counter, I had my entire professional career flash in front of my eyes. I turned to my right and half expected to see my dad beside me, but that was then. When I turned around and saw that the Big Bar was still there, looking much like the way I had left it so many years ago, I realized that it was in that bar, the Big Bar, that I learned a great deal of what I know about this business today, and surely it was where many of the relationships I have in this industry today originated, or were enhanced.
I remember clearly making a trip to the Big Bar a priority in my daily trade show routine. I didn't know so many people back then, but I knew enough to know that if I hung out in that bar, I could meet more people. There was the before dinner crowd, the after dinner crowd, and then the late night drunken incoherent crowd that closed it down every night.
In the atrium is the restaurant, where I remember pitching so many ideas to my AMOA friends, customers and potential customers, distributors and manufacturers, and just plain socializing. I found myself looking around the restaurant at my friends and competitor's asking myself, "I wonder what they're talking about?"
During this trip, I was visiting with a customer in the Big Bar, and clear across the way was a competitor watching our every move. I was wondering again, is he lip reading? That's why I love this business.
Las Vegas is a wonderful place to have a convention and I hope that we get one in Las Vegas in the fall, and one in the spring in Chicago. I've given up hope that the two shows will ever come together, so give me some variety every year. What Las Vegas offers, Chicago doesn't, and vice versa. What Las Vegas doesn't have is the Big Bar, or put another way, there's no single gathering place where you can expect to run into just about everyone at the show if you stay around long enough. Where would that be in Las Vegas? The Japanese restaurant at the Hilton, the Beach Club, the Emperor's Room, the Crazy Horse? That's what I have missed about Chicago.
They kept coming back to me, special Chicago moments from trade shows of the past. I hadn't been to the 95th floor restaurant at the John Hancock building for years, but when the AMOA used to be in Chicago and our entire family attended the shows, a dinner at the 95th was our annual tradition. It was our big night out. I felt kind of silly doing it, but I made a point for our group to go there, and I called my Dad from the payphone. "Guess where I am?" It was a great moment. The first time I had ever seen a restroom attendant was at the 95th, and I'm pretty sure the same guy was still there this time.
Going from my room on the 14th floor at the Hyatt, down the elevator and down the escalators to the show rooms, without going outside, was a welcome relief. The walk from the Las Vegas Hilton to the Convention center, "next door," in the heat of the desert can exhaust a person just going one-way. Once at the Las Vegas convention center, you're not going to decide to go to your room just for a minute to check emails, make a call, or rest your feet, like I did numerous times in Chicago. At the LVCC you're there for the day, and it can be tiring. So my cell phone didn't work on the show floor in Chicago. That was a problem given that our group was always getting split up.
I don't remember the exhibit rooms being all chopped up like they were, although they have probably always been like that. I'm sure there were some manufacturers that were unhappy with their booth placement. Hopefully, the money saved by Chicago-based manufacturers offset any attendance challenges.
So give me an ASI in Chicago in March, and the AMOA in Las Vegas in the
fall. That works fine for this industry member. The attendance was down
(so I read in the release) but the quality of the event felt high. It was
a welcome break, and I congratulate the AAMA for taking a chance.