Farnborough, page-13

It's like I've said in my other posts, from the perspective of a BD guy in aerospace and defence (well, former now) - you don't make announcements about every chat you have with customers and potential customers. 90+% of the time you've got a NDA (non-disclosure agreement) in place that restricts you from saying anything until both parties are happy to release the information, and then it will generally be about signing a contract or MOU. Very rarely do you release a statement saying "yeah we had a good chat over beer and pretzels at Farnborough with Company X".

The way we'd play it was that you make an announcement prior to attending any show to let people know that you'll be there and to tie your name to the show. Certain pre-prepared releases would then come out during the show if we wanted to time our announcements to coincide with the event, as it's a good chance for a photo op with some big names from industry or politics. Plus the show dailies (produced by the likes of Flight Global, Janes and so on) ask for content prior to the show either for free or at a cost. Announcements at a show were good value as they would get picked up by more media outlets and generated better brand exposure.

But as I said in my first paragraph, you don't talk about all your meetings. Almost all your chats are behind closed doors or informal ones during the coffee networking breaks, nightly cocktail receptions or over dinner (occasionally two in one night if you have a busy schedule!). And these are for intelligence gathering and carry with them a certain 'understanding' that you won't make their content public. So it doesn't surprise me we haven't heard anything yet. My guess is that in the next quarterly they may be some comments in there about how successful Farnborough was.