Getting back to full health
EW caught up with Jenabeth Ferguson , vice-president , and symposium director of HFSE to find out more about event organising and marketing in a tumultuous time for trade shows
fter two decades of
A travelling the United States , the Healthcare Facilities Symposium and Expo ( HFSE ), organised by JD Events , finally returned to its home state of California in October . Not only did the 35th edition of the show head back to its place of conception , but it also managed to improve its attendance only two years after the pandemic .
Exhibition World : Following the pandemic , how have your attendees ’ expectations of the show changed ? Jenabeth Ferguson : We ’ re already finding a couple of things about our attendance . The first thing is that a lot of our attendees are from hospitals and , while not necessarily under travel restrictions , hospitals are certainly under budget restrictions . For them , getting away from work is harder to pitch as they ’ re overtaxed operationally . The rest of the healthcare industry is very busy , which is a good thing but makes attending events a little bit harder .
There ’ s certainly been a change in expectations for our exhibitors . For JD Events , we ’ ve always believed in quality over quantity for our events ; we pride ourselves in that . More so now , exhibitors are more accepting of that . For them , having spent two years trying to sell over Zoom , they ’ re just happy to see other people regardless of if they aren ’ t in the hundreds and thousands .
It ’ s also the same thing for attendees – everyone is happy to be out . Before , people just attended for the sake of attending . But now , everyone ’ s a lot more serious and intentional about why they ’ re there .
EW : What benefits does hosting in-person have over virtual ? JF : We never went virtual for any of our JD Events properties . We pivoted to some social media , but never went fully virtual . Specifically for the symposium , virtual just wouldn ’ t work . It works if you want to listen to a speaker and hear their content , but it simply does not work for networking and exhibiting – and exhibitors are the backbone of our shows .
For exhibitors , virtual doesn ’ t allow them to showcase their products , especially in the healthcare industry which is so
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