The Commercial Reality of BETT

There has been some discussion on blogs and twitter recently - especially at www.susanbanister.com about BETT and the apparent conflict between educationalists and companies.

My company is a small company, nevertheless, we've invested more than half a million pounds over the last 5 years in developing on-line solutions that our customers (schools, colleges, training providers and indeed individuals).

BETT is an important event to bring together buyers and sellers, without shows like BETT, we'd spend even more money trying to reach our potential customers on a one to one basis. But BETT is also a significant cost - did you know that the charge just for internet over 4 days is just short of £1000 - yes ONE THOUSAND and unless we see enough potential customers, we won't go.

So educationalists need to keep attending BETT to make it worthwhile for companies, companies need to keep going to make it worthwhile for educationalists, we just have to be careful that organisers don't try to soak both sets of people for as much money as they can get - that's the biggest danger that I see.