Daniel J SaitStatement from David Kitchener, MD of ATM, owners of EI Live!
Following developments over the weekend the decision has been made to move EI Live! 2020 to the new dates of October 19-20. All other aspects of the show will remain the same and the show team is also looking into moving the presentation of the Smart Building Awards to during EI Live! as was planned for the April show date.
Here follows a statement from David Kitchener, MD of ATM, owners of EI Live!
As you will have seen recently, I’ve been quite robust in my response to the Coronavirus regarding EI Live! 2020, but I have to admit that events are overtaking us with the government statement late last week whereby they are predicting that the virus will peak in four weeks, and the pending government statement regarding the banning of larger events due to be made this week, I believe.
As you will imagine I have resembled a sponge of late, absorbing everything I can about the Coronavirus and in light of all of this, and now having assessed everything I firmly believe that as a responsible event organiser it is best to Postpone EI Live! 2020 until October 17 and 18 as build days and 19 and 20as the show days.
You will also appreciate that whilst I have been advocating that the exhibition should continue in April, I have also been working behind the scenes to put a plan B in place, hence the dates above with Farnborough.
These October dates were given to us by Farnborough as they have many shows in the same situation, which in fact work better than September given that the CEDIA tech Summit has postponed to the September 4 and the CEDIA US expo dates are September 8 – 12. So, September is a busy month for our industry.
Frankly, even if the all exhibitors had agreed to the original April dates, it is our responsibility to provide the footfall worthy of a national CI show. Our visitor pre-registrations are actually up on last year, but I would question if we could provide the footfall due to Coronavirus with visitors not turning up on the show days.
The good news is that moving the show to October this year, gives us more time to increase the size and footprint of EI Live! even further, it gives us more time to put more visitor attractions in place and also increase the visitor offering across the show.
In the meantime, and as a spin off we are launching our ‘AV Tech Talks’ with the presentations that were taking place in the EI Live! Technical Theatre, to be released on video with many of the tech talk speakers and the original content that we were going to present in April.
This will be a whole new series that will continue on as a brand in its own right under the banner of EI Live!. We will of course still have the Technical Theatre at the show in October with even more original content.
Of course, this also means that we will have to postpone the Smart Building awards that traditionally take place on the first evening of the show, now set to be October 19
I would add that there is an additional cost from Farnborough to move the show to us as organisers, but I can assure you that this additional cost will not be passed on to the exhibitors, such is our commitment to the industry and maintaining the UK’s national CI exhibition for us all to grow!
Let’s all get behind the UK’s national CI exhibition in October, so that the industry grows and we all grow together!
Visitors or exhibitors with any questions can call the organisers office on 01634 673 163 for more information.