I spent a whirlwind 24 hours in a suburb of the Windy City last week. On Thursday and Friday, I was in Lisle/Naperville, Ill., for the Great Lakes Self Storage Expo, hosted by the Illinois and Indiana self-storage associations and sponsored by none other than Inside Self-Storage. It was a short but productive trip during which I got to meet and spend time with some really cool people.

I'd like to extend a special thank you to Mike Lane and his wife, Darlene, for being such fantastic hosts. Respectively, they are the exective director and senior executive administrator for Professional Association Management Services (PAMS), which has managed various associations since 1989.

Topics on the agenda included self-storage management issues, presented by Linnea Appleby of PDQ Management Solutions; legal issues addressed by Jeffrey Greenberger; and "The ROI of Integrated Security," presented by Alex Lekas of Digitech International. (To view a video on a related subject filmed with Alex at the latest ISS Expo in Las Vegas, click here.)

So ... it was a very decent show, and I made some great connections. I'll admit I'm glad to be home though. Flying these days is really for the birds. And now that the airlines charge you for everything except using the restroom (and don't think that's not coming!), it seems like more of a labor than ever.

I'm guessing that, in time, most organizations will go the way of the virtual, online tradeshow rather than host live events. A consultant showed our company a demo of something along these lines last year. It was pretty impressive. And why not? We attend online seminars (webinars) from the comfort of our own computers. Eventually, we'll do most of our networking and shopping this way. Anyone attended one of these e-tradeshows yet?