Vol. 6, No. 7, July 1994

Viva Las Vegas

Papers and suppliers await NEXPO '94 as if it were the return of Elvis

As far as I can determine, the only downside to this year's Newspaper Association of America's annual technology exhibition and conference is the site.

"I hate Las Vegas."

I've heard that line once or twice in recent weeks.

Despite the generally upbeat belief that more papers are coming to NEXPO '94 -- held in Vegas June 25-29 -- with more money in their pockets, the downbeat is the locale.

Of course, just as this is a different newspaper industry than the one that descended on the desert town in 1991, this is a different Las Vegas.

There are new, vast casinos. There are indoor amusement parks. There are rides for the kiddies. There are spectacular demonstrations of swashbuckling derring-do.

I stand next to no one in my opinion that there is only one civilized, habitable city in the United States (hint: note the mailing address of this publication), but I must say that Las Vegas isn't that bad.

Essentially, if you measure the economics, Vegas is the best of the trio of cities the NAA has chosen to be NEXPO sites: airfares are cheaper, hotel rooms are cheaper, the food is cheaper than in either sizzling (hot) Atlanta or muggy (hot) New Orleans.

My major complaint is heat, but then I can complain about that most anywhere.

And, as stated earlier, this is a different industry: We seem to have weathered the recession of the early '90s, and the expenditures deferred during those lean days are finally being made.

In addition, in the last year alone, a new product category has gained momentum. Inside, you'll find mention of "digital display ad delivery" in a number of the previews. Two years ago, this was basically a one-company category (industry veteran AD/SAT).

Today, along with AD/SAT, which recently went through an ownership and management change, the list stretches on: Ad eXpress, Adobe, BusinessLink, Cascade, DigiFlex (a division of Information International Inc.) and Wieck. And don't forget the Associated Press, which with its AP Adsend might just knock the rest of them off the map.

This year there are more companies that fall into the arena of our purview -- I call it "digital pre-press, editorial services and business systems" these days -- than ever before. We count about 150 companies exhibiting in these areas this year, as opposed to about 120 in recent years.

This made our job of picking the top booths to visit that much harder; we cut ourselves some slack by increasing the number of picks to 70 (10 more than the 60 we've listed previously).

Inside, you'll find our evaluations and recommendations. We also pick the top seven booths to visit (seven is about all you can do in one day, and if you go to Vegas for just one day, we want to guide you to the most important). And we list the leading candidates in product categories such as editorial, classified, display ad and imaging systems.

This month we devote our customarily nondescript centerfold to our unparalleled color map of the trade show floor, handled once again by Joe Shoulak, a free-lance infographics expert and staff artist at the San Francisco Examiner. Throughout the issue you'll find numbers inside bullets; they refer to the booths as located on the map.

As always, we'll be at the show in force. We're still rounding up names, but it looks as though more people than ever before will cover the conference for Cole Papers readers.

Our staff will include Correspondents John Bryan, L. Carol Christopher, George Powell and Tom Shorten. Also on hand will be Senior Editor Pete Wetmore and Circulation Director (and head counselor) Marge Wetmore. Lending moral support as only he can will be Cole Group Consultant Mike Middlesworth.

And I thought I'd swing through for a moment myself.

We'll give you our impressions of the heat in Vegas -- on the floor and off -- in the August and September issues.

Hate it or not, see you in Vegas.

-- David M. Cole

From THE COLE PAPERS, July 1994, Copyright (c) 1994, 1995, All Rights Reserved.