Smau 2008: the next Exhibition will take place from October 15 to 18   

SMAU 2008: THE NEXT EXHIBITION WILL TAKE PLACE FROM OCTOBER 15 TO 18

Preparations are starting for the 45th Smau, the business-to-business exhibition on Information & Communications Technology

 After the success of the past show, Smau is getting ready for 2008, which will be marked once again by its business-to-business formula. The new dates are now available — from Wednesday October 15 till Saturday October 18, 2008  — and the venue, that is the very modern and functional New Rho Pero Exhibition Center of Fiera Milano, has also been confirmed.

Smau 2008 is designed to offer exhibitors and visitors an ideal meeting place for matching ICT demand with supply addressed not only to specialists but also to corporate decision makers (especially SMEs), central and local government officials and self-employed professionals, to whom Smau is a concrete opportunity for getting to know more about the advantages offered by the new technology.

The final figures of Smau 2007 prove that the organizers’ strategy was correct: 476 exhibitors on a total exhibition area of 35,000 sqm (+16% over 2006); over 45,000 professional visitors who flocked to Smau 2007 plus over 1,500 accredited journalists; nearly 32,000 pre-registered visitors who used the advanced web services designed to make their visit to the exhibition easier. Last but not least, e-Academy, the information and training area, was also successful, with around 6,500 participants in the more than 140 seminars organized into some forty thematic tracks and promoted by some twenty trade associations.

The results of a survey carried out by Ares Automotive Research on Smau 2007 visitors confirmed that 75% of them are in favor of the B2B formula introduced in 2006.
As revealed by Smau pre-registration forms, most visitors belong to SMEs (69.38%), but a considerable number also works for large firms (30.61%). 60% of visitors come from the IT sector whereas 40% of them  are from other industries like trade, manufacturing and services. These data prove that Smau is increasingly recognized as a reference point not only for a specialist audience but also for all those who wish to get to know more about the new technology.

Smau audience is quite young —  between 25 and 45 years of age (61.6%) — and has a high cultural/professional profile: nearly all (96%) have a high school diploma and the majority of them hold managerial roles (28.49%) or key positions inside a sector, division or department (20.1%). Employees and self-employed professionals account for 20.9% and 7.8% respectively.

As for the area of origin of Smau visitors, the data revealed that 50% of them come from the North West of Italy and that an increasing number comes from the South (17.9%), the Center (16.6%) and the North-East (14.6%), thus proving that Smau is  the leading ICT event in Italy. This is further confirmed by the fact that 79.2% of visitors did not visit other ICT exhibitions in Italy or outside Italy during the past 12 months.

Updated information on Smau 2007 is available on www.smau.it.