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2002 ERI ATS Buyers' Survey Executive Summary (requires Acrobat),

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Boondoggle travel, winked at as an opportunity for 'continuing education' was a luxury of a time when travel did not contain the currently perceived risk. During 2002 a number of trade shows will simply go out of business. Any operation with a national audience that requires some level of physical touch will be faced with changing its outlook. In other words, local chapters of professional associations will gain in power as the relevance of a national association, cemented in the past by trade shows, fades into oblivion.

That means that in the post-trade show era, marketing costs are going to grow. There will be a broad range of experiments with Webinars, microtradeshows, multimedia campaigns and other web outreach. But, in the long haul, the loss of the trade show will result in a profound strengthening of the local chapter. Interestingly, this dynamic will be the source of the investment required to really build communities of professionals that can be harvested for recruiting/acquisition purposes.

- John Sumser

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