Upon entering the main Hall at IMTS you are immediately invited to take the “Show Daily” pamphlet by an attractive young woman in a tight blouse and spiked heels.
For as long as I’ve been coming to IMTS, there’s always been Gardener’s “Show Daily”, a cheerleading shopper, which parodies journalism. It’s a compilation of advertorials barely masquerading as editorial copy. IMTS degrades itself by allowing the handout to be called “The Official Show Daily of IMTS 2006.” Perhaps people are dumbed down by years of pedestrian tripe, but for some reason some companies continue to spend lots of money to advertise in a rag that few but the totally bored out of their minds could read for more than ten minutes.
The IMTS Directory of Exhibits is another misfit. IMTS is doing a nice job with it’s web map and directory, but the book is a complicated jigsaw puzzle, full of fold out ads, which disrupt the flow of the listings. I find it a convoluted mishmash that is cumbersome to use at the show or after the show.
If you are looking for an exhibition, you cannot find it by going to the alphabetical listings near the back of the book. You will find a folded ad under the tab for Lyndex Nikken, which doesn’t seem to mesh with anything in that section. You will find folded maps requiring magnifying lenses to decipher the names.
