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ITS Officials Can’t Travel to Trade Shows: A Major Threat to ITS Success…
The ITS America trade show is just around the corner (June 4-6 in Palm Springs, CA) and once again it is brought front and foremost to mind a major threat facing our industry, which is the inability of US ITS officials to travel to trade shows. Pre-show feedback for us at Intelligent Devices is disappointing: more and more of the state and city officials that we deal with are unable to travel to ITS America due to restrictions on “out-of-state” travel.
We all understand that budgets are tight and that everyone in the private and public sector needs to watch expenditures, but the level of restriction on travel has grown to the extent that ITS officials are now seriously impeded in their ability to maintain their expertise in ITS systems at acceptable levels. From a show like ITS America, an ITS official will learn the following:
- From the conference session, he/she will learn about many aspects in the deployment of ITS systems; what went well, what went badly, and what can be achieved
- From the Exhibit hall, he/she will see what new applications, products and technologies are available and see/feel items like the new dome cameras, video walls, or whatever. There is no substitute from being exposed to the actual marketplace, to get a tangible sense of who to deal with regarding system procurements.
- From the Technology showcases, get a sense of how real the new technologies are. VII and CICAS are on the horizon. Are they real? What do the letters stand for?
- Networking. The value of the “rub-off” effect that occurs when state officials meet informally, with vendors, consultants, scientists and the like, is drastically underestimated. This is where ITS officials get a real understanding of what works, what doesn’t, and where to get resources (both private and from colleagues in other states) to solve problems before they derail ITS planning and deployments.
We still see senior ITS officials who, while they have heard of NTCIP, have little understanding of the benefits, or practically how to apply or deploy NTCIP. Many of our ITS officials have little exposure to the European style of incident and traffic management. It is not to say that the European style is better or not, but exposure to the international experience that is on display at trade shows like the ITS show will result in better educated ITS officials.
Many ITS officials are behind in their understanding of current technology and ITS products and restricting their travel to trade shows like ITS America is resulting in this body of knowledge falling further behind. We do exhibit at ITS America and it’s interesting to see who drops by the booth, to ask about NTCIP for example. We probably get more inquiries from ITS Officials from Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Chile, South Africa and China than we do from US based ITS Officials. It seems as if foreign governments are more willing to invest in the education of their ITS officials that US states and government bodies. The atmosphere at European trade shows is completely different. Yes, distances are shorter, but many more ITS officials are allowed to travel, than here in the US.
This is simply wrong. The US needs knowledgeable, enlightened, educated ITS officials in order to deploy ITS technologies in practice and the excessive restrictions that are placed on travel to trade shows like ITS means that the US based ITS deployment industry is falling behind the rest of the world. It is that simple.
My solution is simple and somewhat radical. Every ITS official involved in the planning, specification, purchasing, administration and operation of ITS devices should be required to attend at least one trade show per year and report on the experience as part of their job description.
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