It may have been my first time at the Birmingham Dive Show Dive 2015 but I can guarantee that it will not be my last.
Dive Shows are to a certain degree, a social event as much as a business event and whilst everyone is there promoting or selling something, it is a great opportunity to meet up with those divers from around the world you you only tend to meet at dive shows and put faces to names of those who only exist in the virtual world of the Internet.
This was especially true for me. Operating The Scuba News and DiveMedia from our base in Hurghada, Red Sea, Egypt, means that most of our readers, writers, contributors and advertisers are from far flung places around the world. We now have readers from 144 countries and over 150 contributors from places as varied as the Cayman Islands, Philippines, Australia, Mexico and of course my original (and part time) home of the UK.
It is for this reason that Dive 2015 was particularly important for me, to meet some of these people and finally put faces to names. It was a great weekend and when people only exist in the world of the Internet, they are not always what you expect when you meet them in person and I think this was true for those meeting me for the first time. I had a wide range of comments such as that people expected me to be older (although I am 40 with a very youthful complexion 🙂 ) so this was quite satisfying. It was fantastic to meet up with old diver friends who I have not seen recently and I have also made quite a few new friends too, overall it was quite a satisfying weekend.
I would like to take the opportunity to thank everyone who took the time to meet me and offer my sincere apologies for those who I did not get chance to talk to. We will certainly meet at a dive show or dive site somewhere in the world.
So far the next show I will definitely be attending is BOOT in Dusseldorf at the end of January 2016 (but I am hoping to fit in a couple more before then) so if you are going to be at the show please send me an email and I would be more than happy to have a coffee or a beer with you!
