ASIS 2017 Cuts Day 3 Exhibits to 3 Hours

IMO, this is a bad move for ASIS. Sure, the junior employees who get left behind on the last days of a show, and the tear-down crew, will support this. 

From a marketing budget perspective, it is already getting hard to justify ASIS for many manufacturers, and this move just reduces the amount of time you have to meet with attendees. Once you are there, the costs to staff additional days/hours are pretty small in the grand scheme of things, now ASIS is basically devaluing manufacturer's marketing investment in exhibiting.

I support the move to start on Tuesday instead of Monday, that always seemed like a decision that reduced Day 1 traffic and worked against the goal of the show.

The keynote opening onto the show floor is an interesting move, but it has a very "exit through the gift shop" tone to me. If you have to force attendees onto the show floor, then you need to reevaluate things from the top.

My concern would be that, by making the last day so short, they will have to contend with reduced attendance on the second day as well. I suspect a lot of attendees will just fly home on day 3.

I feel that if they can only justify 3 hours on day 3, they should cut it altogether.  2 full days is sufficient.

As an exhibitor I've always viewed day 3 as the day you check out the competition and/or look for a new job.  It will be interesting to see how this impacts that activity.

As an exhibitor this seems like a VERY bad move, you need to waste your time, money and another day at the hotel... It's like they admit day 3 is a complete waste but people paid for 3 days booth/hotel so they can't cut it all together.

We as a company decided to skip ASIS, i look forward to see what would be the attendance. 

Other shows have short last days.  RSA for example.  After one round of failing to notice this one learns to check these things.  So I didn't think that was an issue.  Except for the fact we're ruining it by talking about it, I've found it easier to reach hard-to-find folks at the top of day 3 because everybody else has bailed.

Does the keynote matter?  Did you really drop 3 grand go to Dallas to listen to this weeks not-related-to-physical-security celebrity presenter?

I have always found the third day to be a little easier to get a deeper dive into some of the products. It is certainly not a good day to make contacts with higher level people relative to resolving issues or making deals; however, the "junior" staff, or whoever is left on the third day, are usually competent enough to provide a solid demo and explanation of capabilities for their products. Often it is the local territory rep who does not have that flight to catch and they might be very experienced. 

That said, with this year being in Dallas, there usually are not that many flight choices past 4 or 5 PM for me so I would not stay much past 1 PM anyway. I certainly wouldn't stay another night just to get a couple more hours on the floor. 

We've been having a lot of debates on whether to test the waters for the 1st time with a booth at ASIS. This move, combined with other factors, puts the nail on that coffin

UPDATE: ASIS has announced the Day 3 keynote will be Mark Cuban, tech entrepreneur, Shark Tank participant and Dallas Mavericks owner. Given the heavily male ASIS attendance, we would expect Cuban's sport and TV exposure would make him a good draw.

Cuban is local so that helps but his speaker fee has to be quite substantial so that's a big investment by ASIS to draw people in for day 3.

Correction: Cuban is coming but its Monday at lunch not Thursday keynote. My mistake. 

The Thursday keynote is still not announced though they say it is coming soon.

Three hours?  That's no where near enough time to hand out resumes to all my competitors network with my peers.

The Day 3 keynote speaker will be Carey Lohrenz, the first female F-14 Tomcat pilot, described by ASIS as follows:

She does not appear to be that famous, based on her 2014 book's ~50 total reviews and modest social media followers (~6,000 on Twitter, ~2,000 on Instagram). The lack of name recognition and direct security industry experience will damper potential attendance.

So with all being said and a month before the trade show, do you guys think it's worth it? I'm wondering if to take one the last minute.