AVN Adult Entertainment Expo 2010 Kicks Off Event with Trade Day
LAS VEGAS, NV - AVN's annual celebration of the business of smut opened to members of the industry, trade, and media on Thursday, January 7, 2010. As the country's economic downturns continue to alter the porn business, much ado was made of how the annual expo AEE would be affected. Regular attendees to this year's show didn't have to walk very far to find out.
As I approached and passed through the main exhibit hall entrance, everything seemed to be in order. All the front row booths (from Evil Angel and Wicked Pictures down to Digital Playground and Adam & Eve) were in place and looking like they always did. Passing those booths, the first thing I noticed was the Jules Jordan booth. The chain link fences of the Pornitentiary are gone, replaced by the much smaller podiums-and-posters setup that was used for Erotica L.A. last year. AVN's own booth has been moved forward to the second row, and its clever Red Carpet theme is a welcome upgrade - one of the few. Other than a 90-degree change in orientation, Elegant Angel's daunting and Apple Store-friendly booth has returned intact.
Moving on to row three, things continue to get smaller. Imagine taking a bite out of the "EAT ME" cake in Wonderland, and you start to get the idea of what this is like. Other than the giant AEE Main Stage (thankfully quiet this day) and Mile High Media's lovely booth (where the lighting creates the sense that it's bathed in moonlight), nothing else stands out.
Once I hit the fourth row... well, that's where the show pretty much ends, as far as I'm concerned. From that point on, the exhibit hall is dominated by a variety of vendors and small businesses, with only random sprinklings of talent appearances here and there. These booths can be fun to wander through once or twice, but any more is pushing it. Only the Business-to-Business (B2B) Marketplace saves the back half-- nay, back three-fourths of the floor from being a total wasteland of generic money grubbers. Sure, the booths are also selling stuff, but at least they appeared to put some time, effort, and money into building their displays.
No big events were scheduled for Trade Day, which left attendess plenty of time to wander around the show floor. For me, that basically meant doing laps around the first three rows, looking for new arrivals and surprise guests. I got to meet fellow ADT'ers mindee and vegasmonkeyman, as well as a few forum lurkers who weren't sure if I was Anime Nut or not. Maybe I should've asked Bree Olson for my own Bra Bonnet to wear to the show.
Oh well, enough jibber-jabber for now. I'm gonna start posting some pictures, which will be done through individual posts. I assure you this is for the sole purpose of making things easier for the mods, so they don't have to spend too much time addressing the "full post quote reply" crowd. Could it also be some vain, self-serving ploy to boost my post count? Nahhhhh.