Picture this, I get my latest publication of Entrepreneur magazine and I’m eager to read it. Of course, I’m not reading a paper version, I am reading it on my phone. And wouldn’t you know it, I have to flip through the magazine. Ugh. It’s so frustrating and it’s hard to get back and forth and then dig into topics I really want to read. After five minutes of fumbling through the app, I turn it off.

Flip books have been a digital replacement for a magazine or booklet or catalog. And some even have fancy sounds and animations to make it feel like one is flipping through a magazine. Ugh. Again, not something that helps the function of reading a book or quickly getting to the article I want to read.

In the last year, technology has advanced five years. The pandemic is awful and there have been so many lives lost and people are scared for their lives and people have lost work. There is a lot of darkness. However, in all challenging times there are bright spots where we start to see the positive things that are coming together.

One of the industries that has been hardest hit is tradeshow design. I mean it went from 110% to 0 just like that. There aren’t in person gatherings of thousands of people to protect people from this nasty virus. So, people want and need to connect and get together and what do we do? We innovate. We use technology to come up with new ways to connect, socialize, build relationships, do business together and move forward with minimal exposure to the virus. In many cases the technology was there but not utilized for this purpose. This is exactly one those cases.

Now with trade shows eliminated in the traditional sense, they are popping up in digital environments. I mean business has to happen, people need to eat, people need to work and people need to find solutions to the problems we face.

The new trade show is happening digitally and because the face to face interaction isn’t happening, innovation happens.