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I am not a particularly frequent flyer. I have friends who catch flights every week, travelling to exotic and far-flung destinations from Rio de Janeiro to Beijing. In comparison, I am very modest in my travel needs, taking just a few flights every year.

This year will be the first year in nearly 2 decades that I haven’t flown anywhere. The reasons should be obvious.

Love of Flying

My feelings about this fact are complex and contradictory. Anyone who has read any of my articles on DesignSpark over the last 10 years will know that I love aviation. I have even created a whole podcast episode with my friends dedicated to flight, so it should be no surprise to anyone that I enjoy flying. 

If that was not enough, I have spent a fairly large proportion of my career involved in the aerospace industry, an industry that has been put into mothballs by the events of 2020. The collapse of the civil aviation sector has affected a great many people worldwide, from the aircraft manufacturers themselves to anyone working in tourism and travel. The health crisis of 2020 has placed millions of livelihoods at risk.

BA_Planes_at_Hurn_1d79592573f005fa68f4954db5cef222d8e67dbd.jpg
The Aviation Industry in Mothballs
Image: National Police Aviation Service

One day, the world will return to some sort of normality, even if that normality is new and different. For the sake of the scores of hardworking people around the world who depend on that normal, I hope it can be soon.

Reducing our Dependency

However, flying is something that we can no longer take for granted. The strange situation in which we find ourselves during 2020 has given us a new perspective on the ease of flying. The days of casually leaping on a plane to attend a meeting have disappeared, perhaps forever. The spread of a disease for which there is yet no cure is making many people think twice about their plans.

We also need to reduce our carbon footprint for the good of the planet. I do not have access to meaningful data, and I understand that opinions vary about the harm that air travel causes.  However, logic suggests that reducing the overall demand for air travel must be a good thing for the environment.

Here then is my complex dilemma concerning air travel. I love aviation. I enjoy flying. I work with lots of people who depend, either directly or indirectly, on a healthy aerospace industry.  At the same time, I understand the value of reducing our dependence on cheap and easy air travel, both for health and environmental reasons.

Returning to Normal

When the new normal becomes established, I will still be flying. But there is one aspect of air travel that I might just leave behind. Most of my flying in recent years has been for business.  I had planned to make four overseas trips in 2020 that would require flying – one to the USA and three to Germany. Importantly, three of these flights were to attend trade shows that have since been cancelled or postponed. 

Trade shows. Those of you who know me personally know that I have an even more tortured relationship with trade shows. Most of the readers will have attended at least one trade show in their careers. A large exhibition hall (or several, in the case of the larger European shows) is filled with booths allowing companies to showcase their services. It is a place for manufacturers to display their latest products and for distributors to demonstrate their capabilities to a (hopefully) interested audience. 

Messe_Munich_800px_fb5de72f9b815dcff5988f195b6c3193960c8e3b.jpgTrade Shows - Big Business
Image:  Messe München

Trade shows are big business, not least for the local economy. If we take just one example, the Munich show grounds – Messe München – will host several large events every year.  Each of these events will see tens of thousands of visitors arriving in Munich. All of these visitors will need hotels, food, taxis and all of the other conveniences demanded by professional travellers. This is fantastic for the local economy but costly for those attending the trade show.

Planning for these events requires months of planning. Spending a week exhibiting alongside a company’s competitors breeds a kind of arms race. In order to compete, the booths must grow bigger, brighter and fancier every year. On-site kitchens with gourmet food, interactive displays and multiple floors all drive the costs to ever greater extremes. 

To ensure that each company has sufficient manpower at the show to deal with customers, the business is stripped of key personnel. Each of them will need flights and hotels, driving the cost up further, even ignoring the lost productivity of dragging these people away from their day-jobs.

Is It Worth It?

Millions, or even billions, are spent every year by companies to attend these trade shows. I have heard plenty of people in the electronics industry make statements like “We’ve always attended” or “If you don’t attend, it gets noticed.” Are these arguments good enough? I wonder how many of these companies make a cold, hard analysis of the benefits of attending. 

If the “big pause” of 2020 has proven one thing, it is that work still gets done even when we cannot physically meet. The tools available to industry today, from chat servers and video conferencing to file sharing and virtual reality, mean that we do not have to keep doing the same thing, just because it is what we’ve done before.

Now is the time to rethink how we do these things. What changes are you going to make?

Connector Geek is Dave in real life. After three decades in the industry, Dave still likes talking about connectors almost as much as being a Dad to his two kids. He still loves Lego too. And guitars.
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