Denise Haskew attempts to define the differences between the big European trade show, IBC, and the US trade show, NAB. But in the end it comes down to just one important thing…

Article first published: July/August 2006

Well, it’s IBC time again, and I’ve been asked by a US colleague who has visited NAB regularly, but has never been to IBC, what the differences are between the two exhibitions. Despite the odd similarity (stands, exhibitors, visitors, wires and widgets and so forth), there is one vast difference that is impossible to quantify in any meaningful way: one is in the United States and the other is in The Netherlands.

One of the consequences of this is that at IBC you have to pay three times the price for a hotel room that is so pokey it’d be illegal to put it on wheels and transport sheep in it. The breakfasts too fall short of the Vegas “all you can eat and then a bit extra that you can’t” standard; but if you like a couple of pieces of stale brown bread, a slither of plastic cheese, and three varieties of congealed blood in various shades of magenta, then you’ll get along just fine.

Of course, if you like the comfort of a well-ordered, rulebook-based society, then NAB scores there too. If you piled up all of the United States’ laws and rules curtailing personal freedom (wielding weapons of death aside), they’d reach, at latest estimates, to the outermost ring of Saturn. If you piled up the laws curbing personal freedoms in Amsterdam, you’d probably still need to stand on two copies to reach that tin of processed ham on the top shelf in the MiniMart. In fact, many things that are illegal in the United States are compulsory in The Netherlands.

It is undoubtedly this difference in culture that lies at the center of the major difference between IBC and NAB as exhibitions. To some, it may seem flippant, almost decadent, but I assure you it isn’t. Picture the scene if you will: it’s 5pm and you’re a journalist who’s spent another day traipsing around the exhibition floors at NAB. You’ve had countless meetings on innumerable stands (each placed conveniently five miles apart) at half-hour intervals since 8am. Once again, you’ve missed lunch (and most likely you didn’t make it for breakfast due to the party that finished at 4am that morning) and you’re looking forward to chewing the cud with other like-minded members of the industry and getting a catch-up of the day’s events over a couple of jars before you head off for the next round of evening presentations and extravagant parties.

So it’s off to the haven that is the NAB Pub. Tucked away behind the restaurant, it has long been a favored haunt of journalists, cinematographers, posthouse chiefs, the more happening PRs, and generally those people most likely to provide you with industry insights, hot gossip and interesting snippets from the show floor. You’ve arranged to meet just about everyone you know there.

On the three-mile hike from South Hall upper level stand no. SU35641 (which is nowhere near SU35640 or SU35642 incidentally), you are already imagining the cold beer being poured by the surly barman, the banter and the extremely welcome bar stool to take the weight off the blisters.

You turn up like a character from Ice Cold in Alex only to discover that the taps have been dismantled, the kegs removed and your oasis transmogrified into a coffee bar! A coffee bar (and not even the kind indigenous to Amsterdam). Selling coffee! Grated bits of bitter brown bean partly dissolved in hot water. No self-respecting journalist is going to spend the end of the show catching-up with colleagues in a coffee bar (and nothing to do with their policy of banning Fair Trade coffee). I mean, you must know a journalist. Do we look like the cast of Friends?

Now don’t get the wrong idea. I may like a small tipple as much as anyone, but this is absolutely not about getting drunk. It’s about having a relaxing meeting place you can pop into at any time and be guaranteed of meeting someone you know (as well as being introduced to new people) in a relaxed atmosphere. If there are any NAB officials reading this, take note: forget show dailies, they’re only there to fleece extra money out of exhibitors and contain virtually zero information that you couldn’t find on the press areas of its advertisers’ websites; forget Exhibition Television; forget installing pricey IT systems where people can queue up for an hour to access a terminal showing where an exhibitor is located (to compensate for the appalling stand numbering system). No, if we want to find out where the interesting products are and discover who is showing a secret prototype behind a mysterious curtain, the last place we’d look is the twice-daily advertising rag. No, we’d go to the bar. As anyone who’s visited the show knows, it’s virtually impossible to cover everything. So having a place to meet people to chat with about what they’ve seen during the week, and of course pick up the gossip, was always the most useful thing at the show.

This is one area where IBC scores hands down over NAB. The IBC Pub has evolved over the years from a tent between halls to a large mahogany-paneled paradise for the weary exhibition traveler. This whole Coffeegate scandal is something that the LVCC seriously has to reconsider, and something that the NAB powers that be should be doing something about.

Why not express your own opinion (as long as it’s the same as mine)? Email nab@nab.org, titling the email “End Coffeegate now” and telling them how important it is for us to have the NAB Pub back in time for NAB 2007.

Denise Haskew After 10 years as a television commissioning editor, Denise decided she needed a more intellectual challenge, so she gave it up to become a model. She has done all sorts of useless jobs, such as magazine publishing and PR. She plans to be on the first big spaceship to leave the Earth, alongside all the telephone sanitizers.