Last week's BVE exhibition at Earls Court in London offered positive signs to the broadcast industry in general. After a tough year, BVE 2010 opened with 10% more space than last year, as well as 60 new exhibitors. The show's final results were even more encouraging. Visitor numbers were up 13% (12,614), while VIPs increased from 1358 to 1827, a 35% growth. On the back of these figures, stand bookings for the 2011 show have surged by a third compared with 2010.

Event director, Kieron Seth, said: "The emergence of some exciting technologies in the 3D, DSLR and delivery arenas has coincided with a real sense that the industry is finally looking ahead again. This gave the exhibition hall a real buzz, with business being done throughout."

Feedback from exhibitors was also positive. Typical is the comment from Simon Harper of Gridiron Software: "It was a brilliantly busy show this year. The floor looked the best for ages and we spoke to some great large potential clients."

One of the biggest challenges for any event is to attract visitors of the highest calibre. With this in mind, the show hosted a number of debates on topics such as cloud computing, file-based broadcasting and rolling out a 3G infrastructure. Broadcast consultancy And3 gave an assessment of its sessions: "The And3 panel sessions were a big experiment for us - would we get an audience that measured up to the weighty topics and senior panellists we had assembled? As it happened the audience exceeded our expectations both in number and quality - many continued with discussions well after each session concluded. An excellent experience all round!"

Plans for the 2011 show are now being drawn up. After a surge of interest in pro-audio at this year's event, a new focus for the next event will be radio broadcasting while stereoscopic 3DTV is sure to loom large. BVE 2011 takes place on 15-17 February at Earls Court 2 in London.

www.broadcastvideoexpo.co.uk