Attendance at electronica shows the electronics industry is in good health

It's a massive show which you have to see to appreciate. The 12 very large halls accommodate more than 2500 exhibitors and it's more than 1km from end to end. Such an event should draw big crowds but, over the last few years, attendance has been declining; if only slowly. Given the current economic climate, there were many who thought this year's event would see another drop in the number of visitors. But that proved not to be the case; initial figures from the organiser put attendance at 72,000 – the same level as in 2010. Officially, there's 'cautious optimism' for the future. Not surprisingly, Europe provides the bulk of the visitors, with Germany the largest of all. With the European economy officially in recession and Germany's economy only just showing growth, it would been understandable for companies to cancel travel plans. But they didn't – and what can we read from that? Two things come to mind: firstly, engineers value exhibitions and their associated conferences as an excellent source of information. But there's another aspect to why they go. When New Electronics talked to exhibitors, one common observation was that engineers paid far more attention to product road maps than they would normally. That suggests they are looking further ahead than might be expected. In turn, that suggests that many companies have decided to scrap the next generation of their products in favour of bringing forward an innovative design featuring the latest available technology. While electronica could be dismissed as an exception to the rule due to its size, exhibitions remain a valuable means of communication – whether you are an engineer or a supplier – and should be embraced.