Thursday, July 22, 2010

Farnborough 2010: please leave your WMD at the check-in

Farnborough 2010: please leave your WMD at the check-in

The bi-annual aerospace and Defence industry event held on the outskirts of London starts in the morning melée of commuter traffic in and out of Waterloo station.

Necks see craned high for sight of the notice Boards which tend to give around 8 minutes warning of the platform to take. Serried ranks of dark-suited middle aged men heading out of town is a curious sight. Arriving at farnborough main railway station commandeered public buses stand waiting and After a short ride so begins the queue for a pass. Media and exhibitor passes are mixed together resulting in a long wait time for pre- accredited media while exhibitors engage in epic story-telling as to why the name has changed...

Inside farnborough 2010 it is clear that Italian firm finmeccanica has taken a huge step. No expense appears spared with 3 chalets and a bevy of Italian speaking men and, of course, women. One wonders if there will be a repeat of 2006 with young Italian girls all in red dresses handling the inevitable sponsored cocktail event in London.

Lockheed Martin is low-key - in fact I have not yet found them ! This mornings highlight was a walk through of the new 787 Boeing dreamliner.

In terms of day one awards Boeing and BAE both score highly for courtesy and assistance to media. Northrop Grumman was less impressive and finmeccanica tried hard suffering from having a big operation to manage. BAE made a specials effort to marry visitors with the relevant spokespersons for different areas of the business. This did not make up entirely for the lack of any windows.


Thales - digital press kit, Boeing online, BAE paper based - weight in suitcase !

- Posted using BlogPress from my

Location:Farnborough, United Kingdom



Technorati Tags:
,



No comments:

Post a Comment