Top Audio Show Milan

No insult toward Italians at all. There were many friendly and attentive people at the show, but it was marred - significantly marred in my opinion - by some serious unprofessionalism in smaller rooms that simply was not there two or three years ago. If you were there, surely you encountered the same difficulties I encountered in many of the upstairs rooms. Too many agents for too many brands in the same room, a propensity to talk over the music, not a lot of information to hand (I'm not adding an '...in English' there, but if you ask the price, then ask your resident Italian-speaking buddy to ask the price and the best you can get is 'it depends', something's distinctly up).

I don't expect any kind of special treatment and my lack of Italian in an Italian-speaking show was always going to be an obstacle. I factored that into my report and expected to have severe communication problems. I've had the same communication problems in my lack of Portuguese in Estoril and my lack of Czech in Prague and not had the same issues. Having spoken to a number of journalists covering the same event (not only from the UK, although the UK journalist contingent was perhaps the largest group of journalists... with even more UK journos attending than Italian audio journalists) I can only confirm that I wasn't alone in my feelings of ennui toward this once-excellent show. Given one of my colleagues on a rival title began his blog with "It's a pity you didn't come last year..." and both his and my findings about the endless chatter in the rooms was echoed by a posting to his blog, suggests everything was not as rosy as you paint.

Perhaps my disappointment is made all the stronger because it used to be the best show in the calendar in so many respects. We need shows like this to be better, because they are fast becoming one of the main links between buyer and product. Judging by this year's show, buyers would keep their money in their wallets in so many cases. So, ultimately, if this is a report card, it reads "must try harder".

As to how I treat people, I am not the problem. The problem is if people treat prospective buyers with the same lack of consideration and professionalism, what hope does the industry have?

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