futurestores.wbresearch.com/

I felt like several speakers/moderators were so unprepared it was distracting. I found the execution of the round tables we sponsored to be so bad it really wasn't worth doing. I've been a huge fan of this event in past but not so sure now.

I go to 1-2 related conferences a year in order to have the right level of acumen to do my job (and to meet interesting people in the field with whom to share best practices). In order to stand out, especially in a smaller venue, Future Stores will need a point of difference. What topics are covered here that are covered nowhere else? How is the focus of this one different, and why go here versus all of your other options? A lot of shortcomings can be overcome by a great agenda.

Your ratio of software companies to retailers seems misaligned. If this was a free event I would expect the heavy presence of software companies. When you sit down at a round table and there are 12 people and 6 of them are people who make apps etc you don’t get what’s really working and what is not working. The retailer only roundtables on Thursday were some of the most productive time. I will come back as there is just enough value but really felt the sponsors constantly presenting or attendees being directed back into the trade show area was too much. Providing meals etc is not necessary. If all meals were on your own, and expenses were reduced, we would send more people.

This was our first Future Stores and our team was disappointed with the sessions and the lack of retail technology vendors, e.g. POS providers. Specifically for the sessions, EVERYTHING was very high level and a showcase for the presenter or it wasn't specific to the topic. In discussions, our company said that they wouldn't recommend future attendance unless the sessions had a better balance of "big picture"/general session and then smaller sessions where the presenter(s) were not just talking about what they've done, but breaking things down into the challenges they've faced, their approach, etc and then do table topics where attendees in smaller groups can get more input on challenges they are facing. There could also be more prep work ahead of time asking attendees the topics they want to dive deep on and there could be a sessions where attendees and vendors brainstorm case studies for solutions. We like the shorter session times to keep things moving, but were disappointed in the content when we had actual business issues to address and were hoping to see how other companies had handled them.

I decided to attend just the day I was speaking as I had not had any meeting confirmations from Retailers I reached out to. The entire point was to be able to have one 2 ones with the key decision makers in those companies we were targeting.Upon arrivalI was greeted by the conference organisers and they were very courteous and helpful.However, having looked around the conference room I saw that most of the attendees were obviously tired of the conference by that stage and were mostly working on updating their social media accounts or checking out friends vacation snaps on their laptops or phones. My time is valuable and I had to choose events carefully - having commited to speak/pitch I knew even without those meetings I had to attend.That was an extremely costly exercise for us as a small startup. I don't believe that we gained much value from it.Overall, it did not meet expectations and was disappointing.