Resources

The list is nearly always free and published by the fair itself. The hard part is knowing whether the copy you took is the whole list, and what two hundred company names are worth before you know what any of them sell.

Organisers almost never sell one, and most vendors who do are selling something else. What is genuinely obtainable before a fair, how to tell a real name from a generated one, and what Pengo will not do.

Where each fact comes from, the four things the research refuses to invent, and the places it is weakest. Written so you can check it rather than take it.

What to buy before you connect, how to get a useful first answer out of the connector, and what a thin answer usually means.

The previous edition's exhibitor list is free, public and the best evidence about a fair that exists. Almost nobody reads it before committing the budget. A method for deciding, and the one question a shortlist cannot answer.

A floor plan tells you where every stand is. It does not tell you which forty of the two hundred are worth your three days. The arithmetic of a realistic day, and how to cut a directory down to a route.

A rubric for turning a directory of company names into a ranked list of stands worth walking to, the five signals that carry weight, the two that look useful and are not, and what a score has to show before you act on it.

The category name for software that reads what is published about trade shows and turns it into a decision. What the tools in it actually do, the two very different questions they split on, and what to ask before buying one.

The directory answers it once the organiser publishes one. Before that there are five places worth looking, and there is a second version of the question, aimed at one company rather than one fair, that the directory cannot answer at all.

The one setting every score is decided against. What to put in it, what to leave out, and why editing it makes your existing scores stale on purpose.

Both are contact databases that start from a list of companies you already have. Getting that list, and knowing it is the whole list, is the part neither of them is for. What each covers, in their own words.

Six categories that get recommended as though they were one. Portfolio platforms, exhibitor research, contact databases, event directories, badge scanners and organiser floor plan software, with what each one is for and what each vendor's own page says.

Two credit-metered tools for working a trade fair before you get there. What each credit actually buys, where the two products genuinely differ, and the things Lensmor does that Pengo does not.

One picks which fairs to spend a year's budget on. The other reads one fair's exhibitor directory end to end and tells you which stands to walk to. Where each wins, and what Pengo does not do.

Six tools people move to, placed by the job each is actually best at rather than ranked. What every one of them publishes about its own price, and which one Pengo is not the answer to.