That is until the genius that is SWIFT decided to bring Sibos forward to mid September.

Now, if you are into financial transaction and payments technology, it’s unquestionably one of the biggest and most prestigious events in the calendar, but Sibos is eye-wateringly pricey to exhibit and quite often the dearest line item by a mile in any marketing budget. So if you’re going to do it, you need to extract maximum value from it, just going because all your competitors go, surely can’t still be the only validation you need, even the aim of ‘creating awareness’ seems a bit fuzzy to me. If you are exhibiting at Sibos, shouldn’t it be with the concept of contributing to the payments debate, helping to set the agenda for 2009 and initiating a dialogue that ultimately leads to sales?

This will be our twentieth Sibos, and  we’re representing 14 clients, with a view to creating one-to-one appointments with key analysts, global trade & regional press and also, most importantly, setting up one-to-one sales appointments with their prospects.

Which is great. No, it is really. It just means that, since several of these campaigns need a good six weeks to set up, we are up and running already.

And that’s my point, running, in August? That must be a contradiction in terms, aren’t I liable to spill my drink?