For starters, don’t forget the NPE2009 Drawing for Exhibit Space on February 19-20, in the huge new Ballroom (see the picture at left) of the brand-new McCormick West building in Chicago. Along with several hundred exhibitor-company representatives, you’ll meet the entire NPE2009 team, including SPI staff and key exhibitor-service vendors.

I’ll be there as well, in a Press Room we plan to set up right on the Ballroom floor.  If you have questions about how SPI will support your company’s PR program for NPE2009, by all means stop by and say hello.

You can get a sneak preview of what the new West Building is like from an online photo album I’ve posted at http://picasaweb.google.com/Martinocomms/NPE2009McCormickWest.  (For the photos, thanks to Chicago’s Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority, which operates McCormick Place.)

Now it can be told. That “massive technical conference” that we’ve been saying would take place in the West Building during NPE2009 is none other than the 2009 edition of SPE’s ANTEC™.  This will not be a pseudo-ANTEC or a mini-ANTEC, but the absolutely complete annual ANTEC event as the industry knows it.  The joint announcement by SPI and SPE is posted at SPE’s website: http://www.4spe.org/press/pdf/0802antecnpe.pdf.

I hope to see you in Chicago come February 19!