Substantive Trade Shows for Queens

Today, I went to yet another trade show, this time in the friendly confines of Saitama City, our base of operations in Japan and my other home in life. There were around 25 small venture businesses with tables, and seminars going on simultaneously from 10:00 am to 5:00 pm. I could not attend the morning session because I had to literally spend hours answering e-mails on all sorts of subjects with different clients, potential clients, potential employees and my company members. Right there 3 hours went by, then I headed to the office we have at Mio Shintoshin, a building formerly a hotel but now an incubation office for many upcoming businesses in the city. The trade show itself was held on one of the floors in the same building. Once again, I never get the timing right, and while I was there for almost 4 hours, because I have some may fruitful conversations at each table, I got around to only meeting half of them. Yet, now worry because I felt like I had the whole room, because they never expected me to speak Japanese and have lived in Japan for 12 years. It is amazing when you learn the language of the country you are in how many doors open. Despite the struggle and time needed to hone language skills, it is very doable, and I encourage our new immigrants and Americans in Queens to see the positive benefits of learning the language of English we use commonly for life and business transactions. It can only serve to move people out of their station in life to a far better place. Thinking about all the trade shows I went to in the 5 boroughs, with the exception of the Jacob Javits Convention Center events, every other event held does little to inspire B&B links needed for all businesses to form win-win relationships. Take for example the annual Queens Expo at the Terrace on The Park in Corona, Queens. The show starts late after 9:30 then by lunch time, people are already packing up to go to lunch or go home, after all the preparations they made, and the money required to reserve the table space. The object of these events must be to keep these businesses there at least 6 or 7 hours so that they can interact with potential partners and the general public who attend. Things of value often take time and patience. This logic is lacking in virtually every event bar none. What I am calling for, especially when I become the City Council Member, is a meeting between the Council Members from the Queens borough, the various business development corporations, the Borough President's office, the NYC Small Business Services, and the various local Chambers of Commerce to sit down and think long and hard at having an event of far greater scale in a bigger space where the participants, and especially the people renting booths, would have to be there for an extended period of time so that the ebb and flow of the day can also add some experience and maybe new business contacts. Government officials also need to see the mechanics involved to get disparate business groups to work in tandem. Given proper inspiration and guidance, there is no telling how high we all can go, but if we continue to set the bar too low, the shows generate little, if any, economic activity. Moreover, rules should be enforced where one one company from each industry can attend, rather than having 10 banks, 10 insurance companies getting the best spots, then the rest goes to everybody else. People who have seen this know this to be true. What I am calling for is a more broad trade show platform, with expected yearly schedule of when and where, and as wide a distribution of this information as possible. Let us see how far we can work to implement these recommendations.