Venturing around the Massive Tech Show 2007

I’m just back from the Massive Technology Show at the Vancouver Convention & Exhibition Centre, and it’s safe to say that this was indeed a massive show. There might be others that beg to differ, but when you think that the previous two years had this thing crammed into Science World, this location seems seemingly brainless for such an event.

Not being all too familiar with what the MTS was or is, I wasn’t all too sure what to expect. To me, it was a total melting pot of various technologies, holding true to the show’s name. I ran across a variety of vendors looking to sell their products, ranging from IP routers, telephones, VoIP, and all forms of web presence. Hardware, software, mobile technology, and so on, not to mention fun gadget stuff like segways, electric scooters, and gaming. There was also a fair amount of online education booths as well.

Oddly enough, for an event of this scale, there were a fair amount of empty booths, probably one or two in every other row. As successful as this event has been, it makes me fairly curious if some exhibitors decided to not show up, but they missed a fairly good opportunity to have some tiptop exposure.

Personally, I had a good time discovering various bandwidth providers in and around Vancouver. These companies tend to specialize in small business, but they prevent some nice alternatives to the standard cable provider that we have at home now. Worthy of a replacement service? I’m not too sure yet, but when I find out that their field techs will show up to your location at a specified time, instead of an anytime within a five hour time window, then I am very interested. Oh yeah, and the bandwidth they offer is noteworthy as well, but I’m not going to give out free advertising just yet.

I didn’t make my way into the conference area, but the presentations that were listed did not strike me as noteworthy. Chances are, I might have missed out on some good topics being presented upstairs, but the reason might come from the way the sessions were marketed. Call it a matter of personal preference, but there wasn’t much that struck me as something to not miss.

I do feel for anyone who tried to watch any of the presentations on the main stage though. I’m not sure that the PA was loud enough to hear the speaker over the crowd on the main floor, which was just mere feet away from the back row of seats to watch these things. Two projection screens at each side of the stage were showing slides, but even I had a hard time seeing exactly what was up there. Of course, I didn’t watch too many of these, but the one I caught about ten minutes of was the experience that I just described.

Bottom line, there is good stuff at the MTS. This is the first time in this location, and it is bound to get better and better. According to David Drucker, this year is very evident of that. I would hope that they would continue to be in a location like this in the future, but imagine what the new expansion of the convention centre might hold for a show like this once it is completed. MTS might be developing a tech show with wide reaching appeal if they play their cards right.

One last note, I am bothered by the MTS blog, especially the fact that it hasn’t been updated since the end of February. For a tech show, this seems near sacrilege, especially with the amount of web identity and marketing companies that were there today. There should be someone live blogging the event, posting live pictures, or some form of interaction with its website, especially on the day of the event. Something tells me that it might not be “that type of conference”, but it should be.

Uber final note, big shout out to the Bryght crew. Roland’s first question out of his mouth was if I have found a job yet, and the answer is that I’m trying. 🙂

Update: Big thanks to Jeremy Latham for catching a “typo” on this post, and I also wanted to point out this review by John Chow. He says some things that I was thinking, but in a much better way. Also makes me wish I would have played with the segways a little bit.