Recently, I have been contemplating tradeshows, community, and the ways in which this industry resembles a small town.
I grew up in a small rural community in Missouri. My dad was the country dentist for our community. Every time we went out to the grocery, local hardware store, or farmers market, he would run into someone he knew: a current or past patient or just someone he met along the way. When we went to church on Sunday, he knew half the people in the audience.
I grew up and went to school with farmers’ kids and spent lots of time with them outside. Whether it was playing baseball in the fields, picking blackberries in the woods, or canoeing and swimming in the pond behind our property, my brother and I were always outside hanging out with friends.
After high school, I went off to a large state university where I knew absolutely no one. It was a whole new experience. When I married my wife, we moved to a suburb of St. Louis, and both worked in the city where we knew no one. My career took me to Indianapolis, back to St. Louis (living in a totally different area than the first time) then to Chicago. They were all big cites with big city culture. Then Covid hit, we sold our condo in Chicago, and we moved to a lake house at Lake of the Ozarks in Central Missouri.
It is a huge vacation and tourist destination in the summer, with literally thousands of people descending on the area to spend their vacations, holidays, and long weekends. But then the weather changes and the boating season ends. Everyone goes back to their real homes in other cities. The lake area becomes a small town with just the locals that live here full-time.
If you live here in the off season, especially in January and February when many locals take their vacations and head south for a break, it takes on a really small-town feel. I walk into Jack’s Hardware store and know the guys working there. We are friends with the owners of the local coffee shop, Brewed Awakenings. I know the guy at my local Signal gas station. And we can walk into the bar at Baxter’s Lakeside Grill and catch up with what’s going on with the bartenders. I feel like I’m back in my small town, and I’ve grown to really enjoy it.
When I think about it more I wonder: how different is this to walking into the convention center and knowing the guys behind the labor desk or knowing the labor lead on my large installation? How different is this from walking into the hotel I always stay in and knowing the lady behind the front desk, or the bartender at the place I go to for dinner every time I’m in town?
Or for that matter, how different is it from the opening night reception at the annual EDPA Access conference or the banquet at the annual Randy Smith Memorial Golf Classic? You can walk around the room and talk with all of your old friends, those you’ve known and worked with for literally decades. You tell stories and remember great events you worked on together and those you used to work with who are no longer with us.
Maybe what’s kept me going in this industry for so long is that ‘small town vibe’ I grew up with, became entrenched in, and missed when I lost it. Maybe it’s all the good people you work with, the relationships you build, and the memories you create that keep us all coming back to this wild and crazy industry. Whatever it is, I know I will miss this when my career comes to an end. I guess I better get to know a few more people around town…
See you on the show floor.
This story originally appeared in the Q3 2025 issue of Exhibit City News, p. 86. For original layout, visit https://issuu.com/exhibitcitynews/docs/exhibit_city_news_-_jul_aug_sept_2025/86.
