Must the trade show go on?

Milly Jenkins visits Multimedia 97 but finds that both the exhibitors and the punters seem fed up of IT events

Another week, another event. Such is the frequency of IT shows that event organisers are finding it hard to get companies, punters and journalists enthused about spending yet another day trekking round a sterile exhibition hall, weighed down by a rainforest's worth of promotional leaflets.

Last week's Multimedia 97 show at the Business Design Centre in London saw exhibitor numbers drop by nearly a third compared with previous years, possibly because this year's show was being aimed at multimedia professionals rather than end users. Visitors and exhibitors alike were complaining about the lack of innovative, creative ideas on display.

"Too much trade, not enough creativity," said Hilary Kelsh of The Brilliant Agency, a digital design company. "It's just people selling kit. It doesn't show an awful lot of what's really going on in multimedia. The creative people who actually use these products simply don't have the time or money to come along."

The Brilliant Agency was one of the few companies exhibiting its Web site designs, and was also sponsoring an exhibit of the British Interactive Multimedia Association's 1997 Bima Award winners, which was by far the most exciting stuff on show.

Among the "kit sellers" being dismissed by the "creatives" as boring, was Macromedia, which was demonstrating its Freehand Graphics Studio, Shockwave and Director Multimedia Studio, among other products. Quark Systems was there with its new Internet and multimedia publishing tool, Quarkmedia. Scala, meanwhile, was showcasing its new multimedia presentation and authoring tool, Scala MM200.

The organisers of Multimedia 97 admit that the event business is reaching saturation point. "All the events are chasing the same market," says Henry Cook, press officer for the show. "People are bored with trade shows, partly because fewer products are being launched at them. Companies used to save new products for events, but the most you get now is a few new upgrades."

The more specialist multimedia products being touted included TGM's Voice Gallery, a CD-ROM for multimedia professionals seeking voice-over actors. They can type in details about the kind of voice they want - gender, age, pitch and, in typically British manner, class. KPM Music, a division of EMI, was there to promote its archive CD-Roms for multimedia producers in need of musical relief on their products. KPM plans to put its archive online later this year. Also there was Bibliotech, a new community training and publishing organisation, whose stand represented the "living room of the future", a mixture of hardware and inflatables.

"What's needed is a creative show, a bit like a degree show," concluded Brilliant's Hilary Kelsh. "So that multimedia people can come along and say, `Here's what we've done; this is what this new media is about; this is what it can do." Her wish was fulfilled sooner than she might have expected. Just as exhibitors were beginning to pack up it was announced that the Multimedia event, owned by the Business Design Centre, has been bought up by a rival, Centaur Exhibitions, which plans to merge it with its own event, The Creative Show.

Jonathan Scott, MD of Centaur Exhibitions, said the merger was a reflection of the way the industry is going as a whole. "Multimedia has become too broad a title," he said. "A multimedia show today is like trying to have a PC show. It must be more focused and that focus needs to rest on the creative people in multimedia"n