Meetings, events and tradeshows in North America reportedly represent a $100 billion industry. The meeting and expo industry is ranked 22nd in contribution to the U.S. gross national product. That’s larger than the auto, agriculture and printing industries. Yet very few people have gone to school to prepare for entry into the business. We all kinda fumbled our way in by being in the right place at the right time.

What formal education we did have always seemed to relate to our success in a strange way. In spite of this, our learning, by trial and error, generated some of the most innovative and creative exhibit-supplier employees who have each contributed to our collective success as exhibit designers and service suppliers.

Around the year 2000, a trend to train new exhibit industry talent shifted into high gear. Certification programs were created to train and qualify exhibit managers, like the Certified Trade Show Marketer (CTSM) program, sponsored by Exhibitor Media, as well as a few other skill groups that service the industry worldwide.

Exhibit-designer training was also implemented at two U.S. universities with great success. Bemidji State University, in Minnesota, offers an undergrad degree, and a master’s degree in exhibit design is obtainable at FIT in New York City. Both of these college programs are supported by EDPA member companies and are assisted by the EDPA University Affiliation Program that was started 10 years ago.

Entry to our industry is no longer an accident or an opportunity made available through a friend of a friend. Formal training and accurate data are now available to hone our skills to provide valuable services to the many companies who exhibit and who invest in tradeshow marketing for added market share.

For the seventh year, a preshow exhibit-designer student tour of the ExhibitorLive show was conducted on the day before the show officially opened. Held in Las Vegas each year, ExhibitorLive is one of the world’s top tradeshows for people who do tradeshows. This year’s preshow tour—which I was a part of—provided the exhibit-design students a behind-the-scenes look at specific exhibits in the process of being set up—chaos and anxiety included.

I began the tour by providing an overview of the industry as a whole. I was then joined by Randy Acker, president and COO, Exhibitor Group, and Carol Fojtik, senior vice president, Hall-Erickson, who provided an answer to the question, “How do you plan to organize a tradeshow?”

The knowledge and insight provided by Acker and Fojtik regarding the organization of a tradeshow event represents a combined 60 years of experience. This wasn’t their first rodeo!

The tour then visited 10 exhibitors (EDPA member companies) that each represent a different specialty as exhibit suppliers: full-service exhibit house, show contractor, fabric design, portable/modular design, lighting design, flooring design, international design and A/V design.

Each stop was greeted by the owners or principles of their company who then answered the following three questions: What is your specialty? Who is your target market? What is the strategy behind your exhibit design?

Each exhibitor stop provided a new tool to place in each designer’s toolbox. This unique tour ended in the EDPA University Affiliation Program exhibit, where each designer was given a space to display his or her portfolio and a space to interview for an internship, or a job, during the next three days of the show.

The spirit and generosity of the many exhibit suppliers attending ExhibitorLive continues to be encouraging proof that our industry will charge forward, aided by the enthusiastic support from the many exhibit suppliers who have succeeded with their companies. Exhibit-supplier veterans were all willing to share their knowledge with the exhibit-design students who will carry the flag forward into a new future.

If you wish to volunteer to take on a design student as an intern or become a mentor, please email the EDPA’s Universities committee reps: Dana Esposito or Justin Dworak for further details.

Larry Kulchawik is past president of EDPA and IFES and has been passionate about the EDPA Designer Education program for the past 10 years. He is a recent author of Trade Shows From One Country to the Next (available through ECN and Amazon), and he offers international consulting for exhibit-supplier companies looking for partners to trust and work with globally. Further info at www.larrykulchawik.com.