Messe Frankfurt Inc., the Illuminating Engineering Society, and the International Association of Lighting Designers announced plans in November 2025 to launch Light + Intelligent Building North America, a new tradeshow and conference focused on lighting, controls, and integrated building technologies.
World of Concrete returned to the Las Vegas Convention Center Jan. 20–22, 2026, with its most successful event to date, combining record-breaking education, hundreds of new products, live competitions, and hands-on demonstrations across the show floor and outdoor Bronze lot, with education sessions that ran Jan. 19–22.
Jane Gentry, a regular contributor to Exhibit City News (ECN), will present a session focused on artificial intelligence and return on investment at ExhibitorLive in March.
AI (Artificial Intelligence) is not just a future concept, rooted in science fiction, but the present showcased at CES 2026. Across show floors in a number of venues, packed with more than 4,100 exhibitors, AI moved decisively from theory into real-world application, demonstrating how deeply the technology is now woven into everyday life.
If you ask anyone in the tradeshow industry what is top of mind these days, almost everyone will give you the same answer: rising costs.
From lingering inflation and labor shortages to economic uncertainty and trade wars, it has rarely been more expensive to organize, host, attend, or exhibit at a tradeshow.
Over the past three years, the cost of exhibiting at tradeshows has skyrocketed to unprecedented levels. We’ve now reached a critical inflection point where these expenses have climbed so high that leadership teams are scrutinizing their exhibitions and events budgets more intensely than ever before.
Behind every bustling tradeshow and dazzling expo is a complex operation built on precision and increasingly, on sustainability. Convention centers are not only reducing their environmental impact but also saving money by lowering energy consumption and investing in technology that pays for itself over time.
For Chase Gandel, a project manager at NPARALLEL + Atomic Props, life moves between precision, people, and purpose. Based in his hometown of Crystal, Minnesota, Gandel manages a portfolio of brand activations and tradeshow exhibits across the United States.
For decades, Nimlok Chicago has been a trusted leader in the tradeshow exhibit design and production industry, growing beyond modular display distribution to expand its services, inventory, and national customer base. But as the business grew in complexity, its legacy systems couldn’t keep up. Fragmented data, manual workflows, and a lack of real-time visibility for customers inhibited its growth.
Project timelines are short, clients are asking you to do more with less, and the need for versatile, reusable rental inventory that lasts is real.
Budgets drive every decision. The range of the budgets can be staggering, but one thing stays the same: success comes down to strategy, not just size of spend.” — Cara Michalowski, president of LUXX Exposition Services.
In the high-stakes world of marketing, every exhibit, activation, and event is a shot at building brand love, capturing hearts, and generating ROI. But here’s the truth: Too many agencies promise results and deliver excuses. Storylink Creative doesn’t play that game. They play to win—with you, for you, and alongside you.
