Introduction to EHOBOK

In a recent blog post we introduced the idea of EHOBOK, The Exhibition Hall Optimizer Body of Knowledge: the framework for helping you make the most of your Exhibit Hall (EH) experience.  [Note: in line with current industry practice, we use Exhibit Hall, Exhibition Hall and Exhibition Showcase for the same thing, depending on which book or glossary you look at]

After a worldwide search for authors, we have selected Rob England to write the EHOBOK.  No, we will not be disclosing the selection process. 
Contributors have provided additional input.  Rob has canvassed submissions from readers of this blog, to which nobody responded; from the Pink Elephant consultants who are too busy doing real work; and from all available experts in his office.  As a result of all this input, Astro the dog is credited as a contributor.

Building on our extensive research of all existing frameworks and standards for exhibition hall optimization, we have come up with these key domains for version 1 of EHOBOK:

Exhibit Strategy: planning your EH engagement to optimize the experience

Exhibit Engagement: executing on your strategy by engaging with the EH

Exhibit Utilization-with-a-z: realising the value of individual exhibits

Note: EHOBOK calls these “domains”.  Nobody is quite sure what ITIL calls the larger groupings (other than “books”).  They sure as eggs aren’t “processes”.  (Even what ITIL calls processes mostly aren’t processes).
EHOBOK is a most peculiar (possibly unique) body of knowledge: it is written from the point of view of the consumer, the user. Have you ever noticed that IT gets ITIL books on Strategy, Design, Transition, Operation and Improvement but there are no books for the customer or the user?  ITIL doesn’t even have words for their domains:  Consumption, Usage, Commissioning, Engagement?...  let alone describes them.  And people say ITIL is customer-centric and business-aligned – bah!

Not so with EHOBOK.  Strategy, Engagement and Utilization-wth-a-z are the user-oriented domains.  I suppose EHOBOK could have provider (i.e. host) domains and customer (i.e. vendor) domains too – Design, Operation, Exploitation, Continual Exhibit Improvement - but we will leave them for later … or never.

Watch for posts on each of the EHOBOK domains as we get closer to the conference.

1. Sounds like an interesting read.  Look forward to it and comparing my exhibition hall experiences with that of Astro.

   

   Rod

   Posted by Rod Weir  on  03/18  at  08:52 PM
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