Day 3. Tuesday 16 June 2009
June 17, 2009
“Here comes the sun, here comes the sun, and I say it’s all right” by John, Paul, George and Ringo.
Finally! A little sun in Paris.
Sorry for the Beatles reference above, but after yesterday’s deluge, the site of the sun was a much welcomed addition to this year’s Air Show. They say that to successfully navigate the Paris Air Show you need to treat it like a marathon and not sprint. To prepare for our marathon, the MARCOM team starts each morning with a “Hot Wash,” which is a review of the previous day’s events and what is on the calendar for the day. Hot Washes are great to regroup the team and plan ahead for the day. Well, I can share with you first hand that the entire ITT staff and especially the Night Vision team is moving at Mach 1 from the moment we walked on site today.
Steve Brecken, David Albritton & John Dench review upcoming events.
While I personally was a little slow today with the media side of our attendance, the Business Development team of Mike Alvis and Mike LeDebole had meetings customer scheduled one on top of the other all day. Early in the morning Steve Loranger, Dave Melcher and Mike Alvis met with representatives from the United Arab Emirates to discuss ITT Night Vision’s ability to support a potential order for 15,000 PVS-14s and aviation goggles for their military, police and border security communities. Moving quickly onto his next meeting, Mike Alvis met with the CEO of EO Systems, the 100% supplier of ground night vision goggles for the South Korean army. They discussed a business opportunity for over 25,000 PVS-14 tubes over a 5 year period. Let’s keep our fingers crossed that Mike and his team can bring in these orders! While Mike Alvis was holding court in one conference room, Mike LoDebole was meeting with representatives from Photonis-DEP, Elbit Systems, Aselan and NAC about potential business opportunities.
While the Night Vision team was busy with customer meetings, Dave Melcher and the leaders from Space Systems Division hosted an overflow crowd of customers, journalists and peer companies for a round table discussion on climate-change and climate-monitoring. Simultaneously, the ITT exhibit was jam packed with visitors from across the globe. Imagine standing in front of the exhibit, greeting customers from Taiwan, Japan, Singapore, France, Germany, the Czech Republic, Australia and many others. Now you’ve got to know their customs, business practices and you need to have a general understanding of their languages as you greet them to help them identify the correct ITT point of contact. Not an easy task, but a fun and challenging one just the same. Perhaps the biggest challenge and annoyance is trying to hold a discussion during the afternoon hours. Try to visualize sitting at your desk talking on the phone, but with the sound and fury of an F/A-18 Hornet screaming by overhead. The decibel level is unbelievably high and constant from 1:00-5:00PM. While the fighters and helicopters are always cool to see, there’s nothing more amazing than watching the Airbus 380 again! I know we’ve already talked about it in yesterday’s blog, but it really is an amazing aircraft to watch.
another view from the show floor
With two full days under our belt, we are well prepared for the third and fourth days. Mike and Mike are booked with meetings and media interviews on Wednesday. Stay tuned for more from the Paris Air Show.
Steve
