The day I became a barcode...

Today, I was at InterBuild 2004, the construction industry's largest tradeshow event in the UK, which is held at the NEC in Birmingham. As ever, I had registered online well in advance and had received my pass in the post a week before the event so like countless others, I could randomly wander through the show. This year, there were well in excess of 850 exhibitors, each willing to bore you to death with the finer details of their often dull products. All too many stands had the token sexy women placed at strategic locations so as to lure unsuspecting victims into the salesman's trap. I should have taken a camera with me and written a THG style report on the notable exhibitors of the show...or a Gamespy style report on the women of the show. After all, there was a full squad of glamorous girls in Brazilian football kits, performing the not so glamorous task of handing out free copies of one of the popular construction newspapers. One particular lady at the Architect's Journal stand really caught my eye.

Enough of women! Let’s look to a subject far more interesting, namely, barcodes!!! Sure enough, those with passes, like mine to the right ((smart people pre-registered in order to save paying the £20 entry fee)), had a unique barcode assigned to their existence. This barcode contains the full name and company details of the person wearing it. When you want to receive more information on a particular product, you tell the exhibitor of your desire to be bombarded with literature and they happily swipe a reader pen over your badge and then over another barcode on their clipboard. That's as complicated as it gets. The computers do all the hard work of ensuring what we want is posted. This time next week, our postman is going to be cursing our office...

The biggest disappointment came in the form of the most hyped up feature of the show; something I'd been looking forward to seeing - the Architectural Pavilion. A famous, well known architect had been commissioned to design the RIBA lecture theatre, bar and rest lounge. They were all terrible. The lecture theatre was so small that there were more people outside; craning their necks in an attempt to hear what was going on, that there were inside. Then we have a huge net covered crate, inside which was the RIBA lounge and bar...that is...assuming you're not disabled and need a wheelchair because the access to this area was a 1:2 ramp ((British Building Regulations state 1:12 maximum)).This crate was split in half. In one half, you had the lounge. This was no more than a few leather single seater chairs and a couple of tables squeezed into an area no bigger than most peoples kitchen. Alongside this, another small space was filled with a few weird sculptures with no information to hand as to what you were looking at. On the other half you had the bar. The whole thing was hideous - the walls where black and white zigzag lines with fine red geometric meshes drawn on top...the bar was black and orange...the dividing wall was clad with red leather tiles...and the floor was a mirror that sank/flexed as you walked over it. Sixth Form design students could do better.

All-in-all, the show was very enjoyable. I must have walked miles in the massive NEC building, though even in the seven hours from arriving to making way back to the car, there was no chance anyone could see everything. I’d better get to bed, else I’m not going to get up until late tomorrow. Heehee…

Here's to the next InterBuild!