Arriving the day before the craziness of HIMSS is an annual tradition for most vendors. The Saturday and Sunday before the main conference are the days when most of the booth building activity happens inside the HIMSS exhibit hall.
I have always enjoyed these pre-conference days at HIMSS. Being in the exhibit hall while booths are being constructed is like watching a life-sized game of Tetris. It’s fun to watch the army of tradespeople unpack crates and piece together complex booths while following instructions that look eerily like those you find with Lego building sets.
#HIMSS16 features move vendors than ever before. Over 1300 booths sprawl across multiple halls in the Sands Expo Center in Las Vegas Nevada. With this many vendors, the aisle-ways were especially difficult to navigate during setup. It’s a testament to the skill of the forklift drivers that they managed to squeeze all the crates in and round the booth areas for setup.
As a marketer and engineer, I relish the opportunity to have a preview of the booths before the hall opens. Every year I find at least five or six booths of unique/fresh design that I add to my must-visit list.
This year was no exception.
The Philips booth (3416) looks very impressive this year with four floor-to-ceiling LED displays that look like the ones they use in Football stadiums. The booth itself is beautifully accented with a stunning chandelier in the center. I can’t wait to see it in action when the hall opens.
The CDW Healthcare (3606), SalesForce (10525) and Cerner (2032) booths are also intriguing. I’m particularly interested in the SalesForce booth – partly because of the design but mostly because I’m curious to see how their healthcare offering is shaping up.
If you see a cool or interesting booth over the next few days, I hope you’ll tweet out a notification or post something to the HIMSS16 mobile app.
I, too, was impressed by the forklift drivers–though I had more than one moment where I couldn’t breathe, watching as they navigated around our booth during setup. 🙂