There's a meeting of the Ipex Advisory Committee (IAC) today, where show owner Informa will brief the committee members on its fresh research about visitors wants and want-nots, and no doubt explain what the strategy for the show is following news that various suppliers won't be exhibiting. Shall look forward to hearing all about it in due course. It's reminded me to put my own head above the parapet on an Ipex-related matter, that being the proposed £1m spend to get international VIP buyers along to the show. Buyers in this respect refers to buyers of printing equipment. This was announced after HP and Heidelberg pulled out of the show, and felt like a knee-jerk reaction to me. I hope Informa has reconsidered it in the intervening months. To my mind, it is pointless spending this sort of money ensuring the likes of, say, Tom Frankowski at QuadGraphics will be at the show. Industry big hitters like this will not be swayed by the prospect of free hotel rooms, or gala dinners. They'll either attend an event or they won't depending upon whether it makes sense for their business imperatives at the time. And all the industry suppliers and manufacturers who'd like to sell kit to such organisations know the identities of the key people involved. They are not the sought-after fresh leads. As Benny Landa told PrintWeek just the other day: "For a €10,000 device it’s one thing. For a product that sells for millions of euros, most of your potential customers you know. You don’t need to go to trade shows to develop those relationships." On this basis, I would urge Informa to instead spend that £1m on ways to make sure grass roots bosses from UK printcos have every reason to go along to the show. There's clearly a level of antipathy about the London location, so why not make it super-easy for people to get to ExCel? An idea would be arranging some sort of Ipex hub at a convenient hotel near the M25, with refreshments and WiFi on hand in an "Ipex lounge", a special room rate, and shuttle buses running to and from the venue every half hour. How about subsidising rail tickets, or organise executive coach trips from major cities? A bit of networking en route might be quite appealing. Yes, Ipex needs to continue to prove it can attract international visitors if it's to benefit from international exhibitor budgets. However, international visitors are likely to be quite positive about a trip to London, especially now the capital is viewed through the image-enhancing prism provided by the Olympics. They'll come as long as there's enough of interest on show to justify the trip, which will be the case if Informa gets the print-meets-cross-media mix right. But the show also needs the foundation of a rock solid base of attendees from its core market on its home turf.