Pre-Show Prep Meeting

July 8, 2025 10:00 am – 3:45 pm
McCormick Place, Chicago, IL

Registration for this event is closed now.

Join NACS staff and official NACS Show vendors for a day at Chicago’s McCormick Place to get updates and helpful tips from NACS Staff and official vendors, and tour the McCormick Place Convention Center.  And we are delighted to welcome back Jefferson Davis, who will be presenting two interactive problem-solving sessions designed to:

• Help you with budgeting for YOUR SIZE booth.
• Measure and report exhibiting performance, value and ROI.   

This event is completely free! 

Your company also receives 2 bonus priority points by attending!

Maximum total of 2 bonus priority points can be earned per exhibiting company for confirmed participants.

Agenda

10:00 am  – 11:15 am
Welcome and NACS staff & vendor presentations

11:15 am – 11:30 am
Break

11:30 am – 12:30 pm
Session 1:  Executing Exhibit Programs Within or Below Budget

In this collaborative group problem-solving session, participants will be broken into small groups based on three sizes of exhibits: Inline, small island (up to 400 sq. ft.), and large island (600 sq. ft. +).  Participants will be given a show budget along with benchmarks on Where the Exhibiting Dollar goes by major expense area.

Participants will look carefully at each major expense area and discuss and document specific ways and means to save money and/or get more value for the spend in that area.

At the end of the discussion, a spokesperson for each table will verbally present the size of booth, the total budget given, and share specific things they did in each major expense area to bring the exhibit in on budget or ideally below budget. If they were able to bring the exhibit in below budget they are to estimate how much money they were able to save the company.

12:30 pm – 1:00 pm
Lunch (provided by NACS)

1:00 pm – 2:00 pm
Session 2:  Measuring & Reporting Exhibiting Performance, Value and ROI

In this second collaborative group problem-solving session, participants will be broken into small groups. Each group will be given a specific exhibiting scenario identifying the type of company, products/services marketed, value of a customer or average sale amount, booth size and budget, and a list of exhibiting objectives and outcomes.

The team will discuss and document execution strategies, identify KPIs and metrics they will use to measure and report exhibiting performance, value and ROI to senior management.
At the end of the discussion time a spokesperson for each table will share the exhibiting scenario, goals and outcomes desired, and discuss how they measured and reported performance value and ROI.

2:00 pm - 2:15 pm
Break

2:15 pm – 3:45 pm
Facility Tour

The PowerPoint slide deck will be available on this page in late July.

Contact your account manager with any questions.