In today’s Business Life section of the FT, Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson reports on the growth of the virtual exhibition industry:
“Inside the cavernous exhibition hall, delegates milled round booths, inspecting white papers from exhibitors such as Novell, AT&T and Imperva. Off to one side, contact details were exchanged in a networking lounge while in a darkened auditorium the audience listened to a keynote panel discussion: “Data is valuable: bad guys want it.”
But the show was not in London’s Olympia or New York’s Javits Center but entirely online. The visitors and exhibitors are avatars moving round a virtual environment where booths offer “content racks” of podcasts, business cards are “V-cards” and presentations are webcasts.”
