By Editor Morten B. Reitoft 

Tomorrow the mother of all mothers is about to launch. I am, of course, referring to drupa. The COVID-19 has set its clear traces all over and in all industries, and the exhibition industry is no exemption. drupa is one of the world's largest exhibitions in the printing industry and has every fourth year attracted hundreds of thousands of people to Düsseldorf, Germany. This time it's different as the event first was postponed, then cancelled, and then it became a virtual event. 

The number of virtual events in the past year has exceeded anything you could expect, and that must challenge the organizers at Messecenter Düsseldorf. 

With both visitors and exhibitors/speakers being webinar-wared-out now, drupa should create an event that exceeds everything already seen. And even if drupa was able to do so, the success also depends on the exhibitor's ability to re-invent their presentations - and even more whether the visitors will attend.

None of the above is unfortunately given, so drupa can almost by all measures only be a relative success. Gareth Ward from Print Business in the UK already stated that drupa could become the largest virtual event in the past year - and that would probably not require much, as the number of attendees at the webinars around is limited, but how many attendees would be acceptable?

At drupa 2016, there were more than 250,000 visitors. Nobody expects anything close to this number, so when Ward state that drupa could become the largest virtual event, I can't help think of why?

There is a mathematical logic that X number of exhibitors will attract a certain audience, but the content and platform do not differ from the other virtual events you have seen in the past year? Of course, drupa has the 'Exhibition Space,' but I can't help think why this should attract many? I took a look at a couple of exhibitors. If you look at, i.e., Heidelberger Druckmaschinen, all films are already available on both Heidelberg.com and on YouTube, so why?

In the conference area, you find an overwhelming number of events, and you can filter your selection on various topics, like language, topics, etc. This is all good, but when you have found an event you want to attend, you have to click 'iCal' or 'MyOrganizer,' which is absolutely not intuitive. If you are not German-speaking, it becomes even more confusing as a new page is opened in GERMAN with your confirmations in German. You CAN change to English, of course, but the drupa website has now opened 4-5 tabs and asked numerous times to confirm cookies. It turns me of hundred percent and seems that the "platform" hasn't been tested for user experience!

Legacy meets Virtual - if you have a planner, I believe you would like to sort it per date/time and not by 'Hall.'

When you have come through all these relatively annoying steps (and just so you know, if you haven't registered yet, that is even more annoying, with too many questions and things to be ticked), it's time to attend. What you now experience is that a zoom window opens and prompts you to install zoom if not already installed - so all the hassles to get to a simple webinar end in a zoom experience.

There are no links from all the different pages (unless the exhibitor has added links as part of the descriptions), so you can't, i.e., search for "Komori" and then get access to all relevant pages where Komori is attending as an exhibitor, speaking at an event, or even the matchmaking feature found. You can find your way around and will easily find workarounds for a simply flawed and inefficient system, but with all the blows and whistles about drupa being the best - I would expect more!

Maybe you find the virtual.drupa easy to use, but I believe that compared with, i.e., Future Prints registration and execution, Marcus Timson and Frazer Chesterman - who have a background in the exhibition industry delivered an easy way to register, signup, and participate in the sessions. Of course, drupa has way more sessions - but if drupa ends up with a similar number of attendees per session as the rest of us, can the prices exhibitors pay to attend then be justified?

Based on the above experience, I would say that if drupa is going to rock the virtual boat, it's because of the exhibitors, despite the platform delivered by drupa - sorry to say!