CHICAGO – Many great events and speakers, as well as a trade show environment of which the industry can be proud were evident at TS2 2009 – Total Solutions Marketing for the Exhibit & Event Professional at Chicago’s McCormick Place July 20-23.

I’m not sure how well attended the show was, but there was a lot of networking going on and it felt like old home week. Many connections and reconnections were made.

On the trade show floor there was a lot of lounging around. A meandering of exhibit folks connecting on the floor at all times led me to believe that there are plenty of “old” folks, but how about new clients? The trade show itself seemed smaller than usual and less traffic was flowing through. My company, Pink Inc., was not exhibiting this year, so my perspective was entirely of an attendee.

Education was powerful, with coverage from the exhibit, event and social media approaches. David Adler from BizBash was on a C-level Executive Summit to “Discuss Economic Realities, Web Impact and Green Imperatives.” A presentation by Ian McGonnigal, executive director of program strategy worldwide at George P. Johnson, was on the topic “Optimizing Exhibit Marketing.”

From Twitter to Facebook, text messaging to the Mingle Stick, it seems TS2 is trying to stay on the cutting edge of the social media technologies. At a time where there are so many advances, there are so many possibilities. It will be interesting when we see which of these techniques are fads and which of them stick. My personal opinion is our handheld devices have to be our control board.

Twitter seems to be everywhere now and I must say that Twitter is a cool tool. To show you one example of the power of Twitter,  The Keynote speaker at TS2, Omar Wasow of Cyberspace Pioneer and an NBC Internet analyst, showed @PinkIncDesign or @PinkDeb tweets as an example of what is going on in the “twitterverse.” Pink Inc. was shown on the screen to the whole keynote group. This was memorable for many people and they commented to me later about it.

The Mingle Stick was available for attendees in the registration area. It is an interesting concept where the small device – worn around your neck – exchanged data with another person when you hold them together and press a button. But first each wearer must go into the site and write up his or her own profile. It’s a neat idea, and I must go check out my new connections. Also, I’m curious. Is this little device now mine or was I supposed to give it back?

The Block Party at Navy Pier was full of people, drinking and eating, The music wasn’t too loud, so we could talk and network while enjoying the party. Afterward, a Pub Crawl hosted by EXHIBITOR was a lot of fun, continuing the networking and libations ‘til the wee hours, although these pubs were loud!

EDPA and TSEA’s presence was loud on the show floor and TSEA had its 1st Annual Gala Awards event, which was well received. Voted online by the exhibit constituency, a list of winners of the Exhibitors’ Choice Awards can be found at http://inline-connection.blogspot.com/2009/07/tsea-honors-2009-exhibitors-choice.html.

Debra Roth is CEO and creative director of Pink Inc. of New York City. She can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .