This fall’s two events could not be more different. The former is an intimate conference centred around presentations and discussions with leading speakers, as well as socialising and good food, while DEMA is a huge, intense trade show where you run around frantically for four days in an attempt to meet as many people as possible. Here is a summary.
Kirk Krack of Performance Freediving International gives a talk on the high-tech underwater habitat deep.com being developed in the UK. Diving Talks 2024. Photo by Peter Symes.
Diving Talks
We will take them in chronological order. Diving Talks, held in late October, has quietly become one of my top favourites. This year’s event was the fourth in a row, and since I have reported extensively on the previous editions here in the magazine, which you can easily go back in the archive and fish out this time, I will limit myself to an update and not repeat all the premises and characteristics of this unique event.
However, just to give newcomers a frame of reference without them having to jump out of this article first, I can mention that Diving Talks is not a trade show, although there are a small number of exhibitors with stands, but rather a conference, which is of the pleasant, interesting and relaxing kind.
The focal point is, as the name suggests, talks and conversations. The speakers are a mix of diving medicine researchers, technical divers, expedition leaders, cave divers, wreck hunters, film directors, high-tech companies, biologists, military units and other capacities. In other words, it is a delightful and always interesting mix.
The speakers
Phil Short from the United Kingdom, who now works with underwater habitats, along with Canadian Kirk Krack, who among other things Canadian Kirk Krack, who instructed the actors in Avatar 2 on how to free dive, New Zealand diving doctor and leading scientist Simon Mitchell, Canadian expedition leader Nathalie Lasselin, Portuguese Nuno Gomez, who once held the record for the deepest dive, Gareth Lock, who introduced Human Factors, technical diving instructor, author and technical director of SDI/TDI Mark Powell from England, Jarrod Jablonski from the USA, who is, among other things, the founder of GUE. Canadian cave scientist and technical diver Jill Heinerth, Sami Paakkarinen from Finland, Leigh Bishop from the UK and many more in the same class.
The list is long, so I will end it here. But not without mentioning Maria Bollerup, who together with Rannva Joermundsson, reported live via video link directly from their cave exploration in the Philippines.
Discussions and refreshments
Another characteristic of this event is that there is plenty of time to discuss the presentations and talk to the speakers, as there are generous breaks with refreshments. Whether it is a coffee break or lunch, the catering is also top-notch. They really know what they are doing with good food in these parts. There is nothing cheap cafeteria about the service here. If you are the type to watch your waistline, it is probably a good thing that the event only lasts a weekend.
What was different from previous years? First of all, a new location, a hall that used to be a rope course for the Portuguese navy in the era of sailing ships. A rope course is a very long building where ropes are made. In one hall, the lectures were held, and in another, there was a gallery and a gala dinner on Saturdays. It worked fine and smoothly.
Getting there
Attending a dive show, conference or other event in another country is always going to be a bit more of a bother to get there and surely cost more. That is, if you even have a local event in the first place. In this respect, Diving Talks enjoys a big advantage in that Lisbon’s airport is now embedded in the city and is only a few minutes’ drive from the city centre where the conference is held.
From Copenhagen, where our own headquarters are located, it takes about three hours to fly across the European continent to Lisbon, where the international airport is in the middle of the city, and from there, it is only 4km to the hotel. I usually fly to Lisbon on a Thursday evening flight, which departs around 5 p.m., and I will arrive at the hotel around 8 p.m. local time. In fact, getting to Diving Talks is just as quick as getting to the local annual travel show in my own country, which is held in another part of Denmark, about 300km from Copenhagen.
If you book a flight ticket well in advance, you can get it for relatively little money. It would be a stretch to say that you can book flights and hotels for the same amount of money as you would pay to attend a local travel show in your own country, but if you also need to stay in a hotel, you end up in almost the same price range, and in Lisbon, you get much more for your money. If you are going to Lisbon, which is a fantastic and classic city, you should also treat yourself to a few extra days to enjoy the city’s many cultural offerings and just look around.
DEMA Show
This year’s DEMA was held in Las Vegas. Of the three cities, the other two being Orlando and New Orleans, that DEMA now rotates between, Las Vegas has become my pet peeve for two main reasons. The jet lag, which you have to calculate and take into account if you want to be somewhat functional at the show, is much worse, as the time difference from Denmark is nine hours.
That is why I like to leave four to five days in advance, and I am lucky enough to have colleagues in California who I can crash with for a few days before the show starts. In addition, I find it very distracting to walk around among slot machines—because they are everywhere—and partying and often drunk people who go to “Sin City” to let loose and behave in ways they would never do where they come from.
The fact that a diving convention is held in a city in the middle of the desert is another matter entirely, but there is a logical explanation for that, which I can tell you about on a rainy day. But enough about that.
Expectations
Expectations for this year’s show were mixed, to say the least. Many in the industry had already hinted that they were cancelling because the Formula 1 race was being held in the city at the same time as DEMA. It was rumoured that hotels would be sold out and everything would be more expensive and more hassle than usual. However, this did not turn out to be true. Not that I thought it would, because the whole premise of the city is based on entertainment, concerts, events and so on, so of course, it could handle a Formula 1 race on top of that.
However, there were quite a few barriers that made walking on The Strip a bit of a hassle, but we had not come to the city to go to a casino or see a show. Incidentally, most of the pinheads showed up to the show anyway.
A huge trade show
There are those who disparage DEMA because it is getting smaller and smaller, so let me start by saying that it is still a huge show where you only get to see a fraction of the people you want to talk to. There are around 600 exhibitors, so with 30 hours of opening hours, you would only have three minutes for each if you were to get around the entire row during the four days of the show.
In reality, you can only manage to meet or greet four to five people per hour. According to my pedometer, I walked 10-15 km every day at the show, even though I had to spend a lot of time in our own stand and in meetings.
Changes
It was also my 30th time attending DEMA, so that gives me some perspective. So, what has changed over the years? In the early years of attending these shows, it was an absolute must if you wanted to keep up to date with the latest gear, travel destinations and education. This was back in the 1990s when email existed but was very rudimentary and could not be used to transfer files beyond a low-resolution image or two. Therefore, you had to go to DEMA to both be introduced to new products and go home with a suitcase full of press materials, which consisted of brochures and photos, including slide copies. Those were the days, but not ones I miss.
Nowadays, we receive press materials with photos and videos via Dropbox or WeSend, which has made life so much easier. It has also eliminated one of the original main reasons for going to a dive show like DEMA. The other reason, which is networking, meetings and negotiations, you have more time for, which is a development that I actually appreciate. Apart from the fact that I do not have the hassle of lugging a suitcase full of brochures and other things home, I now have much more time for constructive meetings and conversations.
News and development
Whether this is also the reason why many of the big brands are often absent—this year Scubapro and Huish were conspicuous by their absence—remains to be seen. I myself find it critical that the big brands do not want to support the event with their presence when they themselves live from and depend on this ecosystem. But enough about them…
Whether they do not show up because they do not have any big news to present anyway, I can only speculate, but the snaps have certainly become much longer between snaps in recent years. I tend to think that this is partly due to the fact that much diving equipment has long since matured. After all, how many times can you reinvent or substantially improve a diving mask, a fin, a BCD or a wetsuit? It is mostly minor refinements and less and less often something epoch-making.
But most of the time, we find some interesting gadget at the trade shows, which we then include in the gear news. To summarize, it is mostly in electronics that we see something new, i.e. in dive computers, lamps and photo equipment. Garmin has just released a monster of a computer that can, among other things, send text messages to other divers. See the short review in Equipment News. We will follow up with an actual test later.
On the travel front, we saw a number of new operators, mostly from Indonesia, where there seem to be new resorts that we are in talks with to learn more about. But closer to Denmark, we also found a couple of liveaboards with tours in Saudi Arabia and an operator trying to interest the Americans in Scapa Flow, which, as you know, is located in the Shetland Islands north of Scotland.
If we are to take the temperature of the industry, this year’s DEMA was more productive than it has been for a very long time. I would suggest that this is partly because we have finally shaken off the pandemic and its aftermath, which still cast a noticeable shadow over last year’s event. The fair was quite well attended, but not overcrowded either.
Optimistic impressions
However, the outcome was well above average and expectations on all parameters, as meetings and negotiations were far more concrete and fruitful than seen in a long time. As always, only time will tell what the conversations will lead to in the long run—that is just the way it is with these fairs—but we are left with a solid and optimistic impression of a productive fair. And the pounding jet lag you return home with is a little easier to deal with.
