While getting ready for Security, SDM and smartHOME magazines’ virtual tradeshow, iSecurity, on March 2, 2011, the question occurred to me: When was the first virtual tradeshow?
According to Wikipedia, “the "virtual tradeshow" was first publicly described and presented as "ConventionView" by Alan Saperstein and Randy Selman of Visual Data Corporation, now know as Onstream Media, in April 1993 in a presentation to investors at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York city. The company was videotaping trade show exhibitors’ booths and then attaching the videos to HTML floor maps. Although ConventionView met with some early success, the company closed it down returning to the market with a multimedia virtual tradeshow platform called MarketPlace365 in November 2010.