Islington show

I stopped by the Independent Travellers World Show at the Business Design Centre this afternoon, I went to the show a couple of years back at the London Arena and wanted to see how this compared.

The Business Design Centre is on Upper Street, Islington. In the mid 1980’s I was always going to a couple of independent record stores on Upper Street but it’s been a long while since I’ve been over there and the area has definitely come up.
Lots of new coffee shops with outside tables, restaurants, little clothing stores, a busy street scene with a variety of people up and down the road trying to get you to sign up for this or protest that, and a trendy young crowd around. Even the Angel underground station looks brand new, shiny new walls and floors with big, wide platforms.

Inside, the Design Centre is split on two levels, around the outside are lots of glass fronted rooms, which I guess can be adapted for what ever the particular event requires. This show seemed to use some of them for talks and presentations, holding 30-40 people, and some as office space, but a lot were empty. There’s a balcony going around the second floor allowing you to get a view of all the action in the middle area where all the stands and exhibitors are.

I’d say the show was a similar size to the London Arena one with the stands maybe laid out in a more orderly way. The show opened at 10am and I got there around 1pm. I don’t think this show attracted as many people as the previous one I went to, there was no waiting to get in and most stands seemed to have plenty of staff who were free. I don’t know what the build up to the show was like publicity wise, but it was a beautiful sunny day and at £7 to get in, not overly priced. Its also more centrally located and easier to get to.

They had some Aussie comedian called Mickey D who got a half hour build up from a blond with a mike, ‘he’s won this and that’ etc, I thought he was pretty lame and he struggled to get a laugh from the crowd.

The last day is tomorrow from 10am to 4pm.

By BootsnAll | Permalink

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