Retail Paradox Weekly will be absent next week, but not because we’re slacking off: on the contrary, all four partners will be traveling to New York City for the annual NRF Big Show, and we’re taking a slightly different approach to our coverage this year.

Regular RPW readers know that we cover the Big Show every year. And each of us has been a regular attendee for many years prior to opening RSR’s doors in 2007. However, all of those shows all had something in common: our coverage of them was almost pre-determined before we even got there. Allow me to explain.

We typically book our calendars solid (and I mean solid – often times more than a month before NRF even rolls around), and while it guarantees that we get to meet with the people we value most – our clients and friends – it very rarely allows us the ability to attend a session. And it almost never affords us time to explore the show floor to find newer, smaller, or lesser-known technologies that may be cutting edge and of interest to you, our readers. This year, we’ve changed it up significantly: we’ve been taking pre-NRF phone briefings (and have also scheduled a series of post-NRF debriefs) with the people we normally meet with at the show, allotting ourselves more time to hit up both sessions and the show floor with an eye for what’s new and exciting. It’s a lot more work, but in the end, we think it will be worth it.

So if you’re at NRF yourself this year and happen to see Nikki, Paula, Brian or myself walking the aisles, please don’t hesitate to come up and say hi – it’s a lot more likely we’ll have a chance to talk and won’t be rushing off to a meeting we’re already five minutes late to attend! But here’s the real value of our new little experiment: if you don’t have the chance to attend the show (or you do, and you just happen to be locked away in your own pre-scheduled NRF activities) we’ll be hosting a webinar – free for anyone to attend – on January 23^rd, revealing the high points of what we saw this year. You can pre-register by clicking here.

By this time next week, NRF’s Big Show will be starting to wind down, but we’re excited about our new coverage format, and hope to help capture a lot more of what went on during those event-filled hours. Join us for the webinar if you can.