Last week I promised an article that would take a deeper dive into the recent Shoptalk event in Las Vegas. If you hadn’t heard, the retail-focused show was an inaugural event, but hardly the work of newcomers. It’s put on by the same folks who run the Money 20/20 show.

Was it as special as everyone is saying it was? It think it was, and here’s why.

Firstly, the show is built on a very different model. Instead of a large expo hall, technology vendors were mostly relegated to “Main Street ” – a wide aisle running down the center of the expo area devoid of booths. Indeed, there were over 200 sponsors of the show. But the booths that were there (in a few aisles flanking Main Street) were very small. Instead, Main Street, itself, was comprised of tiny uniform counters for the majority of the vendors on hand, each capable of hosting only 2 chairs. The backdrop that ran behind both sides of Main Street was thematic, as well, made to look like store fronts (imagine a pet store, then a sporting goods store, all created by a singular artist). Vendors’ had no signage of their own – only a uniform white placard above their area to tell you who they were. At first, it took some getting used to. Even with a show map, I actually had a hard time finding a few of my first meetings, and I wasn’t alone. I bumped into a few colleagues having the same problem. And even the show workers with “ask me ” boldly printed on their shirts were unable to help. But after a short while, it started to make a lot of sense.

Because people didn’t come to Shoptalk for the expo floor. They came for the content.

Having never attended even a Money 20/20 event before, none of us here at RSR knew what to expect from this show. So I booked my days there the way I would any show. Which meant not much time reserved for sessions, and a lot of time in pre-booked meetings with technologists both new and old in the expo hall to stay current. And here’s where, for me at least, it gets really interesting. When the conference was in session (more on that in a moment), the expo hall was dead. And I mean whisper-quiet dead. Imagine 2 representatives from a vendor just standing around talking to the 2 representatives of the vendor located next to them. A veritable Noah’s Ark of people with nothing to do.

But when I asked the litmus test question, (as I always do at every show I attend), “How’s the show going for you? ” very few seemed to mind.

Turns out most of the tech vendors in attendance knew what they were getting into. They understood that the show would be content-heavy. That sessions would be nearly non-stop. And that when those sessions were going, they weren’t going to have much foot traffic. In fact, apart from an hour-long break in the morning and 20 minute break in the afternoon, there wasn’t any time in the schedule for conference attendees to visit the exhibit hall. So why didn’t they mind?

The answer I kept getting was that the content drew the right kind of attendees. The ever-elusive “right titles. ” So vendors got their attendee list in advance, booked private meetings either during the rare times allotted during the day, or in many cases, off hours for breakfast, dinner or drinks. The few vendors who were unhappy spoke of the lack of foot traffic on the show floor; the lack of chances to pull a retailer they’d never had contact with before as they walked past. But for the majority of vendors there, they could have cared less. The “if you build it, they will come ” model was working just fine for them.

A few other things that made the model different:

• It was high touch. The event felt far more like a high-end user group than a general show. Full-out breakfast, lunch and dinner were accompanied by impressive spreads of snacks and beverages throughout the day. Evening events all featured open bar. They also featured user-group-type entertainment (sadly, I missed Wyclef Jean’s performance. Somehow I’ll survive). The venue (the Aria) was as comfortable as Las Vegas can be. These may seem like trivial things, but for someone who was in the event business in a former life, they tend to be the things that people remember most.
• The sessions were surprising. I mentioned last week that the main-stage sessions I attended didn’t seem sanitized. That moderators asked questions that appeared to catch interviewees genuinely off-guard. I won’t go so far as to call that adding a level of “danger ” to a retail conference, but it certainly seems unprecedented in recent years, when most big-tent speakers’ top concerns include not saying something that could get them in trouble – immediately – on Twitter.
• The sessions had little repetition. Admittedly, I didn’t catch as many breakout sessions as I would have liked (the aforementioned meetings I’d pre-booked with vendors). However, from all accounts of colleagues I conferred with, there was less of a chance you’d hear something at 2pm that you’d already heard at 11am.
• It was sold out. They capped attendance at 3,000 attendees, and even still had a few sessions where “overflow lounges ” equipped with streaming a/v feeds were required to accommodate all who were interested. And lastly:
• It will double in size next year. During the opening keynote on day one the founders announced that in 2017 they’ll have at least 6,000 attendees, that the event will jump up from May to March, and that instead of taking place at The Wynn Hotel (as first planned), they’ll just be taking over the entire Aria.

I don’t know what impact this show will have on our industry, overall. But I’ve been to enough conferences to know that it’s different. And as evidenced by out-of-office alerts lately, more and more people are getting in the conference and user-group game. In fact, there were multiple times this spring when all four RSR partners were at different events. But no matter where they were a few weeks ago, all of them were hearing about Shoptalk. Will it siphon off budget and attendees from larger shows? Maybe. But I’m guessing that a very real effect will be that other show hosts look to Shoptalk to learn ideas on what the future of retail conferences will evolve to become.