Russian Internet Week RIW-2010

For the first time I attended the RIW 2010 exhibition as a participant and one of the representatives of the Inside Company, but to be honest: for the first time I was an exhibitor. Therefore, she made a lot of new, interesting impressions, which I would like to share with you my dear colleagues and just the readers of this blog.

A little about the exhibition itself. She passed at the Expocenter, there was a riot of colors on the stands, sound of megaphones, music and politely or cheerfully (depending on mood) smiling representatives of companies, among whom was your humble servant.

Unfortunately, the exhibition hall had excellent acoustics and, as a result, everyone listened to everyone, and as a result sometimes they did not even hear themselves. In addition, from the problematic moments, we can note the poor quality of the Wi-Fi Internet, provided free of charge by Beeline (which could not withstand the influx of visitors almost from the very beginning of the exhibition) and the high cost of cafeterias. Of the benefits can be noted spaciousness and cleanliness in all rooms.
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And of course, if we talk about the exhibition, then the most important part of it is visitors and participants.
People were present the most different: cheerful and concentrated, questioning and explaining, searching and finding, young and in years, participants and visitors, security guards and organizers of the exhibition. Whoever we met here was: teachers and artists, poetess and journalists, directors of large companies and female models, students and serious specialists in the field of IT.

What brought all these people to the RIW-2010 exhibition?
On the basis of communication with those who approached our stand, as well as on the basis of everyday experience, we can assume that visitors to the exhibition were attracted by the desire:
• See, learn something new, amazing, interesting, useful;
• Find customers for your business;
• Find a performer (s) for their (s) tasks (s);
• Get interesting impressions from the surroundings, the atmosphere, gather up funny free trifles (there are few such people and mostly students, schoolchildren, or occasional passers-by).

We, like other exhibitors, wanted to attract new customers for their business, strengthen relationships with regular customers and in general: tell visitors about what we are doing and why this is an important, interesting and necessary business.

Funny point: at the exhibition, competitors get together and work side by side - shoulder to shoulder. And while by and large do not interfere with each other. This is, in a sense, the Olympics, which replaced the real war. This is an active competitive process in which knowledge of specialists, and professionalism of the company, and the right approach to the client are important. This is where the specialization of each comes to light. Literally, any word or any additional possibility described or offered by one or another company, an expert, plays a role in the distribution of orders among end developers. In my opinion, the exhibition in miniature and in an accelerated mode is the natural repartition of the market with its own laws of monopoly and its element of chance. It seems that the exhibition is a model of the work of the market in the relevant field - the part in which demand meets supply.

Now a little about personal impressions from the exhibition. What immediately attracted any normal man in this showroom?
Of course, beautiful girls - models that smoothly cruised between the stands, attracting views not only with their beautiful outfits (for some, it consisted only of paint), but also with the names of the companies that they advertised, the stands near which they could with them to be photographed, contact information and services provided by companies. Particularly distinguished in this method of self-advertising company producing a product called "Megaplan." On their behalf, to the visitors, loudly (through a megaphone), beautiful mollusks and dryads, traveling on Segway scooters dressed in the style of "Bodyart", were crying out. Is this a good way to advertise? Perhaps, yes, because now everyone knows about Megaplan, or at least heard, absolutely everyone who visited the exhibition or read articles on it. Does this kind of advertising have minuses? And again, perhaps, yes. Such an advertisement is shock to some extent: people look more at half-naked beauties than at a stand. I remembered for a long time a quite serious and middle-aged business client who, at the time of the appearance of one of these naias, asked me to interrupt the explanations, because of him, I quote: “The brain has disconnected”. After the girl disappeared behind the stand, he happily woke up and repeated his question. However, the pros of such advertising still clearly outweighed the cons, so draw conclusions ...

Some original souvenirs from various companies were also interesting, for example, at the stand of Kaspersky Lab, it was possible to receive for free “Personal Protective Equipment not included in Kaspersky Anti-Virus”.
Speaking of attracting customers. What methods were used at our booth? Well, first of all, we brought a bunch of sweets and other sweets with us, and secondly, of course, the main chip used in conjunction with our partner 1C-Bitrix at any exhibition: beautiful butterflies, which are freely located on all tables and posters. These bright-winged beauties actively moved into the hands of our future customers in exchange for business cards and completed questionnaires.

And of course, speaking of attracting customers, we should not forget about actively held contests and master classes - the embodiment of a person’s desire for knowledge and “free cheese”. Every half hour our booth was filled with a small crowd of people eager to get a prize or learn something new, the first often turning into the second and the second into customers.

What are the developments based on the product 1C-Bitrix interested future customers? Requests were very different: from the website business card to the corporate portal. However, in my opinion, people were most interested in photo galleries, online stores and cheap business websites based on the “First Site” edition of the “1C-Bitrix: Site Management” system. The visitors approached, asked questions and received competent professional answers from our specialists, signed agreements. None of those who visited the exhibition remained unanswered, consulted, or the site, if needed.

In addition, at the exhibition there was an exchange of experience between partners of various companies - leaders who provide universal paid site management systems, such as 1C-Bitrix, UMI, Amiro and others. We, the developers, shared their experience in implementing such systems in various conditions on various projects and quietly made conclusions for ourselves. For example, which system is more suitable for online stores, and which one is for developing portals in a short time.

So, for the specialists of our company, the exhibition has become a good reason and a better way to get to know our customers, share experiences of integrating various content management systems, get new customers and strengthen relationships with old ones, learn something new about the technologies we work with.

And, of course, the exhibition brought a lot of positive emotions, especially its ending and the contest for the best speech about the 1C-Bitrix: Site Management system. In my opinion, the exhibition was very effective and brought many pleasant acquaintances and emotions.

Thank you all and to the new article!
Oleg Stepanov.