By Ken Pole | June 17, 2013 Estimated reading time 3 minutes, 7 seconds.
“We again attracted 10,000 registrants,” CADSI president Tim Page recently told Canadian Skies. “We had some 645 booths, which was capacity at the new property; we had 15 visiting foreign delegations, and we had dozens of MPs and Senators who chose to come by and see what our sector is all about. We think that augurs well for the future.”
Page said that while the May 29-30 show at the Ernst & Young Centre adjacent to Ottawa International Airport hasn’t change in size, “the energy level and the seniority and quality of the visitors and delegates did increase.” That was borne out in conversations with visitors to the MHM Publishing booth as well an impromptu poll of other exhibitors. The mood was by and large decidedly upbeat across a broad spectrum of companies.
Asked whether there had been any shift in the type of exhibitor, Page said CADSI’s experience has been “that exhibitors will decide what they want to profile, based on what they believe the Government of Canada is in the market to buy in any given year.”
As at previous shows, the exhibitors were a Who’s Who of defence and security suppliers. Aerospace was well represented, with Boeing and Lockheed Martin both offering popular access to simulators of their newest fighters. Other major participants, to name only a few, included Alenia Aermacchi, Bell Helicopter, Bombardier, CAE, EADS (Eurocopter and Airbus), General Dynamics and Pratt & Whitney Canada.
Page said that CADSI doesn’t try to sway its members on how they exhibit. “We are an organization that now represents 745 companies. They see CANSEC as a really important meeting ground that brings together the entire community of customers, supply base and intermediaries. They make their own decisions as to how they want to project themselves.”
Having said that, he assumed that as the show matures and international awareness grows, he expects Canadian companies will be even more interested in ensuring “that they are putting forward those products, services and technologies which are winning in the export market and are export-ready now.”
Page said CADSI staff had done a “hot wash” of the latest show to sort out what he initially called “the good, the bad and the ugly.” But he was being facetious about the “bad and the ugly,” saying those boiled down to exhibitor and parking space and how to maximize networking opportunities. “Those are all good problems, if you will, for us to be faced with.”
