11 years ago I had an idea to develop an internet portal (portals were hot back then - remember VerticalNet?) for the trade show industry. The site was called TSMI for Trade Show Marketing Institute and registered as an .org domain. It was ahead of its time, built on an alpha version of an ASP-based CMS using exerpts of content from more than 60 different sites (this was before licensing online content was common).
The reason for using an alpha product was, of course, cost. Unfortunately relying on unproven software from a tiny company meant a lot of bugs, constant updates and, in the end, no product at all. The developers went in a different direction and my beautiful ahead-of-its-time site was dead in the water by late 2002 - about the same time I started blogging about trade shows.
In the ensuing years I've given a lot of thought on how to use the domain for something else related to trade shows. But I never came up with anything.
In a week I'll be letting it go. No sorrows. In fact, I wouldn't have even thought about tsmi.org had Network Solutions not sent me a dozen reminders to renew.
That's not a bad idea for a website, considering you thought of it in 2009. I don't think there's a website like that yet, or one that I know of.
Posted by: AzTradeShows | April 12, 2012 at 12:48 PM
Is there are updated site anywhere? Would love to hear more ideas...
Posted by: Bill C. | June 07, 2011 at 11:43 AM
All the best :)
Posted by: Jeremy | March 23, 2011 at 08:19 AM
Hope you come up with something interesting soon.
Posted by: Jeremy | March 23, 2011 at 08:18 AM
Not updating. Been out of the loop for too long now.
Posted by: Rich | January 04, 2011 at 07:20 PM
I thought this blog was closed down. Are you going to start updating?
Posted by: Camelback Trade show exhibits | January 04, 2011 at 03:14 PM
Good Luck!
Posted by: Trade Show Display | January 02, 2011 at 12:52 AM
Best of luck in your future endeavors.
Posted by: Promotional Products | October 16, 2010 at 08:10 PM
I did a similar thing. Built an interative quote system for trade show suppliers. Exhibitors could come on fill out a form for their requirements and get multiple quotes. Way ahead of it's time and more importantly the wrong market place. I think it was far to niche. People have made fortunes since with the same idea for insurance etc. etc. I now run discountdisplays.co.uk and still try to think up the next big idea!
Posted by: tim | August 05, 2010 at 04:15 AM
Do you guys have a new site anywhere?
Posted by: Pablo Edwards | June 25, 2010 at 12:58 PM
Steve: unless i'm misunderstood, this blog isn't the one being "hung up", this is a .com page not .org so you can still come back here and visit! I've also just found this blog - very interesting indeed, will be back! :-)
Posted by: Werbemittel | January 11, 2010 at 03:05 AM
I just stumbled across your blog, and sorry to hear you're hanging it up. I've always thought that a good idea for a blog site (like yours) would be a "forum" for trade show exhibitors and attendees to vent about what a train wreck the trade show they just exhibited at/attended. All that money to buy the display/graphics, get to the show, worry about things back home, etc and no leads, sales, etc. Or an attendee may say only half the exhibitors showed up. Of course good comments would be most welcome. Eventually, the blog could be organized into shows (click on a link) and one could view the comments of another one (exhibitor or attendee) about that show. Perhaps some of your favorite bloggers would be the show organizer, trade show managers, themselves. The brutal honesty of the bloggers may be tough for some of them to hear. The blog would only be lightly edited (curse words deleted). As the blog grows, you would have advertisers wishing to reach those exhibitors/attendees and that would be where the money comes from (think Southwest Airlines, Skyline Exhibits). Just a thought...
Posted by: Steve | September 09, 2009 at 05:44 PM