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During the last Deep Dive of Great Ideas, "The Time for Tradeshow Innovation is Now," Amy Ledoux, CMP, CAE, senior vice president, meetings, expositions, and special events, ASAE, and John Parke, CMP, president and CEO, Leadership Synergies LLP, led a three-hour session where participants debated tradeshow models as we know them and hypothesized about the future.

Parke noted a few key trends when it comes to the future of tradeshows. Here are three:

• Technology. The impact of social networking and the virtual meeting.
• Financial. The high stakes of meetings, often representing 50 percent or more of an association's income.
• Globalization. How are we making our meetings accessible in terms for international members.

An interesting stat Parke offered from CEIR on virtual meetings is that 40 percent of corporation brand managers are interested in investing in virtual media. That's a decent percentage, so if you're thinking of going virtual, don't discount the amount of buy-in you might be able to receive.