Sue Pelletier is doing a nice job of blogging from the IAEM event in San Diego. I’m disappointed I couldn’t make it to the event given that it is so close by this year.

One discussion that came up was the issue of deposits for exhibit space. This is something we’ve gone back and forth with here at TNC. Last year I made the exhibit space due in 3 payments - with the first third due upon signing. However, it added an additional amount of administrative accounting and I really didn’t feel like it made a difference in terms of getting early signups. So we’ve gone back to 50% deposit and the final 50% due 90 days before the show. We give the exhibitor 10 days to make the initial deposit before releasing the booth space for re-sale.

When you focus on brand new industries (like podcasting) it means you’re going to have brand new companies exhibiting and often times they are in startup mode and even 50% can be a stretch. But not collecting a deposit at all is dangerous - without some sort of financial commitment, exhibitors are much more likely to bail out later.