Getting situated in the hotel presented its own set of challenges, one of which was that I did not use a valet to park the vehicle (bad choice) and then in a haze of activity I forgot where I parked in the underground bowels of the hotel, and I simply could not find it again. Fortunately, the next day the concierge came to our rescue. He located our truck, and we instantly became fast friends. He (Jamie) turned out to be the very best concierge I have ever encountered, and he was a major factor in getting us through the various hiccups we endured throughout the week.
Saturday, the 20th, was used to familiarize ourselves with our surroundings and plan for the next phase of our endeavor. The hotel restaurant had a limited menu but the offerings were quite good and the portions were huge. Whether we chose the breakfast buffet (to die for; if possible, it was even better than the one we had enjoyed at The Rosen Centre in Orlando), the breakfast sandwich (terrific), or their version of a club sandwich (yum) we quickly learned that on each occasion there was more than one meal before us. We adjusted accordingly and took doggie bags back to the room.
After breakfast on Sunday morning, the 21st, faced with logistical problems of travel between the hotel and GWCC, as well as an impossible parking situation at GWCC, I relied on a suggestion by Jamie and called a taxi. It took forever for the service to answer the phone but the fellow who subsequently arrived had been a cabbie in Atlanta since around the time Rhett Butler and Scarlett O’Hara were in the throes of their own ill-fated passions in the vicinity. He gave us his own direct cell phone number, and from that time forward he took care of our logistics and transportation needs without any muss or fuss. That solved a MAJOR problem for us. It was an adjust-on-the-fly situation and he helped with that enormously.
This sandwich in the hotel restaurant was HUGE! Way more than one meal. Unfortunately, there was nothing even remotely like this to be found in the convention center.
This is what GWCC looked like just before the crews laid the carpet in all the aisles
IWF Atlanta, 2022
The International Woodworking Fair (IWF) trade show, held biennially in Atlanta, is a Pretty Big Deal, comprising and showcasing companies of all configurations which are associated with woodworking as it relates to the building construction industry. This is not a consumer concentric trade show. It is geared to the professionals who build—and finish—things out of wood products for all types of construction. It is held in the Georgia World Congress Center (GWCC), which is situated hard by Mercedes-Benz Stadium wherein the NFL Atlanta Falcons play their home games. This bewildering complex (Halls A, B, B-C, and C) is located in the heart of downtown Atlanta, of which I am not a fan. Congested, complicated by narrow pock-marked streets running helter-skelter, and claustrophobic-inducing massive hotels built with almost no green space in between, this is an inner city that presented challenges to this newcomer. By comparison, the palatial Orange County (FL) Convention Center (OCCC) and hotel row straddling International Drive in Orlando, FL, it is not.
As for the positive aspects of GWCC and IWF Atlanta, it is just a three (3) hour drive from Knoxville (plus whatever traffic jams one might encounter along the way, whether it be major bridge construction in Chattanooga or the generic fender-bender for which rubbernecking drivers in ALL lanes insist on slowing to a CRAWL). Anyhow…
The show dates were August 23-26 inclusive and beginning on the 18th the place was a beehive of activity. Seeing a trade show from the inside is an education all within itself. It is a cacophony of sometimes barely controlled chaos, an anthill of fork lifts and miscellaneous other motorized industrial vehicles serving to transport crates, boxes, and all sorts of various equipment necessary to put on one of these soirees, frequently turning into traffic jams worthy of an interstate highway multi-merge-lanes cloverleaf. We arrived on the afternoon of Friday, the 19th, to unload our equipment at the dock.
Then we went to get checked in to our hotel (The Hilton Downtown Atlanta) which, as the crow flies, is about a mile and a half from GWCC. Unfortunately, navigating the maze of surface streets in between seemed like about five (5) time that. It is at times like these that you come to fully recognize that bellhops and parking valets are an absolutely essential component of this part of our economy.
This is after a day of the preliminary chaos of getting the freight shipping containers distributed to the various Exhibit Booths!
A few hours later and you can move around the floor without too much obstruction.
Getting a little more breathing room.
Once we got to GWCC on the 21st to begin setting up our Booth we discovered that some of our exhibit material was missing and that our Booth had not been equipped or set up as I had ordered and paid for. That took a while to sort out, but we did. We also discovered that, unlike OWCC in Orlando, GWCC does not operate the HVAC during the two days of setup. It was August. In Atlanta. It was miserable. Worse yet, there were no food vendors on the floor, so not only were we hot and sweaty, we were also very hungry.
We did what we could do with what we had in hand but we were still waiting on some issues to be worked out, so we called our cabbie and went back to the hotel. There in the welcome comfort of AC and nourishment we planned our assault on GWCC on Monday, the 22nd. After a good breakfast at the hotel and a quick cab ride over, we got right to work on our Booth. Things came together pretty well, we managed to survive the heart by periodically going out to the concourse where the AC was ON(!) and we had brought a few morsels to fortify us until we could get back to the hotel. By late that afternoon we had the Booth ready for the show and we were dead tired.
It should be pointed out, given my negative comments about the GWCC layout and the HVAC debacle, the people with IWF Atlanta, and the support crew they hired to assist exhibitors in getting issues resolved, were nothing short of topnotch. They were terrific.
We were in Hall C which was still a pretty chaotic scene when we left on Monday afternoon, and on the way out I managed to trip on a roll of carpet. I did a face plant—literally. I didn’t get my hand down quickly enough to break my fall and my face took the full blow. I didn’t know the extent of the damage until we got out to the concourse to wait in the AC for our taxi. Then I noticed the blood. My optical frames were way out of whack, and I was sure that I had broken my nose until I realized that the blood was coming from a fingernail which had been bent back in the collision with the carpet roll. I hoped it wasn’t an omen. Long story short I spent the rest of the show dealing with optical frames which could not be repaired, and other residual effects of the fall. I survived. But not without some soreness and more than a little bruising of my pride.
On Wednesday, the 23rd, the first thing on my to-do list was to take possession of the scooter I had reserved to get around on. Given the disjointed layout of this complex and the distances I would have to travel in the Hall to make contact with the manufacturers and distributors I had my sights on it was imperative that I have some mode of transportation other than my feet. The scooter made it possible for me to get from one end of the Hall to the other in a matter of a couple of minutes—in case I needed to get back to our Booth in a hurry.
Naturally it turned out to be an ordeal to find the scooter vendor (completely unlike it had been in Orlando), which was tucked in to a little nook that was not visible unless you were standing almost directly in front of it. Finding it raised my blood pressure about 75 points. And then, once I finally had the scooter under me, it took me a while to work my way through the maze to find Hall C, and then our Booth. In the meantime, Joyce had gone directly to the Booth to greet any visitors who stopped by. So far, so good. I should emphasize the utility of having motorized transportation in such a setting. Given my reason for being at IWF, Atlanta, and my need to be able to navigate quickly from one end of the Hall to the other in short order, I simply could not have accomplished my goal without it.
Gettin’ down to the real nitty gritty of show prep.
One of these scooters was absolutely essential for me to be able to do what I came to do at the Show.
Show starts tomorrow morning!
I made a quick recon of the Hall to locate the food vendors and restrooms and discovered that our half of the Hall was not cooling properly. A few phone calls to Staff personnel got that sorted out and the HVAC working correctly within a reasonable amount of time. In my initial travels around the Hall, I had also found that there was a decent number of food vendor stations situated around the perimeter of the Hall, so I knew that we wouldn’t starve to death. As is typical for a trade show, none of the food vendors were 5-Star quality (or even 3-Star) but the variety made it almost passable. I took lunch back to our Booth for Joyce and myself and then got to work.
At long last I could finally focus my full attention on the reason that we went to IWF Atlanta, 2022, as an Exhibitor, i.e., to make contact with potential manufacturers and distributors of my inventions once I have secured the patents. I planned to visit those exhibitors that I had previously identified using the online Show Map as potential lessees of my patents, etc. These exhibitors were spread out all across the Hall, so I methodically started at one corner and went to work.
Despite that I was hampered by the fact that I still did not have approved patents, all three (3) applications had been filed and were now pending probable acceptance from the USPTO. With that confidence I cruised up and down the 28 football field length aisles of Exhibit Booths, stopping at the ones which I deemed to be potential partners, introducing myself to the principals, and inviting them to visit our Booth. The reception I got served to reinforce what I had experienced at IBS/NAHB in Orlando in February just six (6) moths prior: there is nothing else even remotely comparable to my inventions currently on the market, or even conceived by the existing industry. The field is there to be taken, and my revolutionary system stands poised to do just that.
As the photos show, our IWF Booth was three (3) times the size of the one we had at IBS/NAHB in Orlando, and we had five (5) banners compared to the single one just six (6) months prior. Additionally, this time the banners featured some of the drawings which were part of the patent applications so that visitors could begin to get a more complete understanding of how all of this modular system, which focuses on accessibility, is going to work.
As for the results of the Show itself, despite the lingering residual effects of the COVID pandemic (the 2020 Show had been cancelled due to the plague, thus it was the first one since 2018), this particular event featured more than 900 exhibitors representing more than 540 product categories. Total registered attendance was announced to be 25,524, coming from all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia, as well as from 92 countries and provinces—all insiders of whom were eager to see what’s new, and to take the temperature of the industry. All in all, it was a success.
On Thursday, as I again cruised the Exhibit Floor, renewing and reinforcing my contacts, I began to plan the most efficient way to make our eventual exit and on Friday afternoon, as the Show wound down, we disassembled the elements of the exhibit, hand carried it all out to the concourse, called our cabbie, and in short order we were on our way back to the hotel, now in possession of the contact information I would need once all of the patents have been granted, the first two of which were published on October 25th and November the 1st of 2022.