Attendance for OTC 2012 is expected at over 89,400, which will make OTC 2012 the third largest attendance in the show’s history. OTC 2012 set a record for most exhibit space in the history of OTC.  OTC was started in 1969.

Here are some of the highlights from my week at OTC 2012.

It was a true pleasure hearing about the history of OTC from C.A. Richards and Chuck Richards of  C.A. Richards and Associates at the MTS OTC Event held at the Museum of Natural Science. The all time attendance record was 108,161 set in 1982.  Just two years later the oil industry saw some very tough times and there were actually no exhibits at that OTC, just papers and presentations.  The attendance for that year was around 2,500 attendees.

On Day 4 of OTC 2012, I spent time in the outside exhibits and the new OTC Pavilion.  I spoke with some of the exhibitors and found out a lot of them were first time exhibitors at OTC.  Some thought they would never get into OTC but found out with all the additional space, they actually had a chance. With the addition of the outside pavilion OTC 2012 had the largest amount of exhibit space with 641,350 square feet.

As my OTC Day 3 Blog mentioned, it was Go Big or Go Home for the exhibits.  I could not get over the size of the booths this year.  It truly shows that the offshore oil industry is busy.

Touch Screen technology – Quality Connector Systems, a website client of Upstream Marketing had a unique touch screen in their booth to request product brochure information.  The Touch Screen technology was offered by 2020 Exhibits their trade show booth provider.  Easy to use technology with some great tracking analytics.

I found 4 local Houston companies who on their current website are advertising for past OTC event participation.  I ask you, if you visited a company’s website and on the home page they had Visit us at OTC 2010, what first comes to your mind?

Are they still in business?

What’s up with this company?  If their event info is this dated, can I trust their product info.

Dated website, Dated Company… (your visitor just hit the back button and moved to the next company listed in their Google search for your product line)

Make sure you keep your event list up-to-date.

OTC 2013 will be held May 6 – 9, 2013.