​Why Paris Air Show is essential to me as a communicator

This coming week I will be attending Paris Air Show along with several of my colleagues from Nammo. These massive trade shows are among the highlights of my professional calendar every year. Yes, they are exhausting events – over the coming days my step counter will go into overdrive as I spend 12 hours a day on my feet, most of it walking between meetings in the searing heat on the tarmac at Le Bourget airport (temperatures are forecast to exceed 30 degrees Celsius every day – lovely weather for wearing a suit), but it is absolutely worth it.

The reason is simple – for the duration of a show like Paris Air Show, the defense world shrinks. Suddenly the whole industry is within walking distance. This is important, because the aerospace and defense industry is by nature global. Nammo alone is represented in 14 countries (as you can see on the map below), and our network of customers, partners, suppliers and contacts spans even further still. When they all come together, like they do in Paris, we are able to complete meetings in the space of a few days that otherwise would have taken us months, if not more. It is simply a massive meeting place, and a way to see what the rest of the industry is doing.

Nammo as of June 2017

This is particularly true for me, working with communications. Along with all the industry representatives and the buyers, Paris Air Show also serves as one of the main gatherings for the international aerospace and defense trade press. That means that coming to Paris gives me an opportunity to meet with journalists from a number of countries that I would never get a chance to meet otherwise, and to talk with them about what Nammo does, about what is happening in the industry in general, and to learn more about what they are interested in. This year, Nammo is also for the first time attending the annual Aerospace Media Dinner, where we are sponsoring an award for the best young aerospace journalist. The value of a strong trade press is something we really believe in as a company, and something that we want to express through this sponsorship.

This is the first of at least four such major events that I will be attending this year, and I will be sharing impressions from both this show and the later ones with my followers on Twitter (@endrelunde). For now, follow me for photos, comments and updates, as I navigate aircraft, chalets and thousands of visitors at the Paris Air Show!