No one disagrees with the idea that our industry has challenges.

What we are not on the same page about is what those challenges are.  This is not necessarily because we do not agree so much as we all see the industry from our very specific vantage points and human nature is to lobby first and foremost for our own interests.  The challenge is that our industry is large enough and complex enough (we can all agree on that) that we will not make progress until we can bring everyone to the table and we can at least agree that while we may not all have the same problems, that does not make any of the problems less important.  I would submit that for us to have an effective dialog, four things must happen:

· All parties must be at the table (From exhibitors to labor and everyone in between)
· We must agree that the success of the exhibitor is everyone’s common goal and any changes must benefit the exhibitor
· That we need to look for areas of common agreement (Ex: Making it easier for business people to receive visas to travel to the USA for tradeshows)
· That looking for common ground should not keep us from shying away from tackling the hard issues that we do not agree on (the cost of exhibiting)

I plan on attending an all industry summit on October 6th and I am hopeful we can start a productive conversation.