The B2B North West exhibition returned after a year to G-MEX

It has been marketed more thoroughly than last year and so reaped the rewards in terms of attendance.

Was it worth going to? I have my doubts about the value of exhibitions against time and cost for both exhibitor and attendee: the useless giveaways, being pitched about services you have no interest in and the unavoidable sore feet. Well, it certainly satisfied many.

There are many talks worth seeing; Bob Geldof’s talks were well-received as were many others.

I went to the “Impact of future technologies on SMEs” chaired by Mike Ryan of Idaho and featuring Dave Carter of the Manchester Digital Development Association, Dave Crowther of Melandra and James Walker of Cisco.

The essence and conclusions of the presentation and question and answer session are:

Technology will continue to converge

Much technology will be freely available, but the better quality versions will be charged for and the more unreliable and less secure versions will be more popular

Tele-presence (video conferencing) and IPTV on demand will be future technologies to look out for

The job skills of tomorrow will require being able to use innovation for commercial aims and the ability to solve problems

More of us will be home workers

New jobs, such as eBayers, will appear as real career choices

SMEs will be able to adapt quicker and more effectively to a rapidly changing environment than bigger businesses

An enterprises’ customers will be their sales force and their social networking will be their marketing

It reminded me of when I first saw the Internet and realised that something special was happening – that process of rapid change is still continuing!