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Glad to have you on board again! If you know of a colleague that you think would like the information and material in this tradeshow, please forward it to them, or send them here to sign up!

 

Ah, the sounds of spring! Birds singing, people laughing, leaf blowers blowing, lawn mowers mowing. And the neighbor has a new Harley that seems to fire up at any time, day or night. 

 

This week in the newsletter, a quick video look at ten types of Instagram posts you can do from a tradeshow floor; a look at multi-function stands for your tradeshow booth, and a fun interview with Jeff Quade of GES, where we talk about shows returning to Las Vegas, what a show services company does (and doesn't do), how to keep costs low and much more. 

 

Soundtrack for this week's issue: Dua Lipa's Club Future Nostalgia. My listening habits tend to get stuck in the past, but now and then I realize that with an Apple Music subscription, I should check out new music. I ran across this dance record from 25-year old English singer/songwriter Dua Lipa and really liked it. It moved me, it grooved me, it made me nod my head in agreement. Or something. She's quite the artist - her first album came out in 2017 and spawned 8 (!) singles, including a #1 in England, and a #6 in the US. She's also won Grammys and a slew of other awards, as noted on her Wikipedia page. Listen to the album here on Spotify.

 

This TED article outlines the 7 types of rest you might need and how to go about getting it. The 7 types are: physical, mental, sensory, creative, emotional, social, and spiritual. Obvious advice would be to make sure you are carving out time for exercise, sleeping, screen-breaks, nature, and meditation. But two types of rest that I’ve never had words for before are emotional rest and social rest. Emotional rest is giving yourself time and space to freely express your feelings. (I think my twice-monthly therapy sessions satisfies this.) And to experience social rest spend time with positive and supportive people that “revive” you, and stay away from the relationships that drain you of energy. — CD

 

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Mark Hurst:

 

As I write these words, three of the most powerful men in the world are getting ready to turn on their camera and dance around the truth. Today's congressional hearing on disinformation (here's the committee page, and here's C-SPAN) will feature the CEOs of Facebook, Google, and Twitter - Mark Zuckerberg, Sundar Pichai, and Jack Dorsey - answering for their companies' role in the January 6 insurrection, among other crimes.

By now the complaint should be familiar. The algorithmic amplification employed by these companies rewards toxic, deceptive, or otherwise harmful content. Disinformation spreads the fastest, and thus yields the most profit, as it maximizes all-important "engagement." For a PR shield, human moderators are paid exploitation-level wages to watch videos of assault, torture, and beheadings so that the CEOs can claim that their companies are "doing something" about the problem. Burning down democracy and civil society sure is profitable!

As you see footage of the CEOs deflecting and dodging questions, keep one thing in mind: The business models of Facebook, Google, and Twitter are fully dependent on amplifying toxic content. And I mean fully dependent. Remove the amplifier and you kill the company. Conversely, leave the amplifier in place and it doesn't matter what you do, adding human moderators or better AI or anything else - the outcomes will be the same.

There is absolutely nothing new here. Almost two years ago, I wrote Toxic Content Has a Simple Solution: Kill the Algorithm, in which I pointed out the obvious: "If the algorithm is the problem, the solution is to kill the algorithm." 

 

Why You Can't Order a Tradeshow Exhibit Online. Well, mostly...

 

In Tradeshows, Perception is Everything (Almost!). What does it take to leave a good impression?