The changing face of dental exhibitions?

I recently attended the BDIA Dental Showcase exhibition, a masterpiece of organization by all concerned, getting so many stands and people together at the right place and at the right time. Given that the pandemic had stymied dental meetings since March 2020, it was refreshing to see that dentistry was getting back to normal, or was it back to normal? It was impossible to examine all the stands (circa 175) in depth in person, so, of the stands that I did not visit, I read the synopses in the show magazine and calculated the proportion of stands allocated to the wide variety of entities that contribute to contemporary dental practice.

Live dental meetings are not as prevalent now as they once were, the pandemic having put paid to those, with webinars such as those organized by Louis Mackenzie for (Dental) Update seminars thankfully stepping in to fill the void. Indeed, webinars will probably continue to be a no brainer for organizers, given that they can pay a speaker the same for a webinar beamed to hundreds of participants (but with no check on who is actually listening!) as they might for a ‘live’ lecture addressing a hundred people. It was therefore refreshing that Dental Showcase actually went ahead, given that attendees could ‘interview’ sales folk face to face about their wares, and it was interesting to note that the highest percentage of stands, at 31.8%, was what I allocated to ‘equipment’: in this was included, apart from the obvious (dental chairs and units), instruments, loupes, etc. The manufacturers of those obviously thought that dentists who were interested in re-equipping would attend the exhibition, where they could see and compare a variety of equipment under one roof, which seems an excellent concept for those who are renovating one or more surgeries.