Fixing Wireless Wireless

Next year, two of the largest associations for the telecom industry are launching new and separate trade shows after years of collaborating on Supercomm — The U.S. Telecom Association will launch its TelecomNext show in Las Vegas in March, and the Telecommunications Industry Association will inaugurate Globalcomm in Chicago in June. Because of their timing and the ever-improving state of the industry, and especially because they're new, both shows are likely to be vibrant and engaging for both attendees and exhibitors.

The Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association should pay close attention to the buzz that's sure to surround those two shows and, if possible, bottle some of it and apply it to its own events in 2006.

The CTIA holds two major shows every year: Its main Wireless show in the spring, and the smaller Wireless IT & Entertainment event in the fall. The shows should be inherently stimulating because — well, because they're about wireless, which represents the future of communications more than any other telecom technology or service, and because the wireless sector is continuing to experience rampant growth. But somehow, certain aspects of the CTIA events often seem to have a difficult time channeling that excitement. If the wireless association isn't careful, one or both of the two new all-encompassing shows that have their debuts next year — both of which surely have designs on wireless technology developer exhibitors and wireless service provider attendees — will eclipse the CTIA events and become the de facto everything communications events.

Even if the CTIA's events still draw the right kinds of companies to exhibit and attendees to peruse those exhibits, and even if exhibitors generally report decent show-floor traffic, there's still something missing: the association's ability to harness the most riveting issues and aspects of wireless technology and the overall mobile industry and package them into something that reflects back to the industry what it is that really makes it great. That's something the CTIA shows once did, and through economic doldrums and a management changeover at the association, something was lost.

Last month's event is a good example. At the show's opening sessions — any trade show's first and foremost opportunities to emit excitement to attendees — policy and disaster recovery overshadowed both IT and entertainment, as CTIA President and CEO Steve Largent led by talking about the association's industry tax relief efforts and the wireless sector's response to Gulf Coast hurricanes before even touching on the (completely unrelated) themes of the show. Those elements are clearly important, but they can't take center stage at a mobile applications show. In fact, maybe they're so important — and so separate — that they deserve their own event focused on wireless industry policy issues.

The IT & Entertainment show has been flawed ever since the CTIA opted to change its name from Wireless Apps, which far better represented the critical aspects of the event. The CTIA would do well to recast the show as the mobile content extravaganza that it is and stop trying to toe the line between the two somewhat arbitrary divisions along which the event is divided.

In fact, maybe what really needs to happen to refresh these important wireless-focused shows is for Largent's CTIA to put its own stamp on them, rather than maintaining the event direction established by previous management. The CTIA should come up with new ways of generating buzz at opening sessions, perhaps by staging town-hall style discussions or presidential-style debates between wireless industry luminaries. Excise the seminar-style speechifying onstage and let the industry's precocious and rebellious edge flavor the discussion and dominate the theme. Give the show that business-with-pleasure flair that characterizes its many (and well-attended) after-hours gatherings.

In short, transform these increasingly staid events into experiences that truly reflects the style and character of the wireless industry.