Article SummaryThis blog post pulls back the curtain on the unpredictable realities of trade shows, sharing real stories from seasoned Skyline professionals who have navigated everything from missing freight to indoor rainstorms and still delivered successful exhibits on time. Through every challenge, the episode highlights the preparation, problem-solving, and calm leadership required to keep clients confident when unexpected show-floor curveballs happen.
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Rain falling indoors. Freight held hostage by another exhibitor’s damage claim. A pigeon that chose the absolute worst moment. Three Skyline veterans pull back the curtain on what really happens on the show floor and how the show goes on anyway.
Guests: Duane Griffith & Sonja Stricklin | Host: Brian Lanning | Runtime: ~44 minutes | Available on: Apple, Spotify, YouTube
This episode brings together three people with a combined seven-plus decades of trade show experience. If something can go wrong on a show floor, at least one of them has already lived through it and figured out how to fix it before the doors opened.
Brian Lanning – Senior Managing Director, Skyline Exhibits (since 2005)
Duane Griffith – VP of Strategic Accounts, Skyline Exhibits (since 1993)
Sonja Stricklin – Senior Manager, Client Experience, Skyline Exhibits (since 2007)
Brian opens the episode walking through the extensive system Skyline has built to reduce show-floor chaos before it ever starts, because the best stories about handling a crisis begin long before anything goes wrong.
The checklist is longer than most people expect: thorough discovery to align exhibit[NS1.1] design with client KPIs, early project management involvement across every department, dedicated service coordinators assigned to each account, graphic pre-flights and physical color-match samples, full-color bound setup instructions for every I&D crew, complete show summaries with CADs, rigging layouts, electrical drops, and all contact info, full exhibit staging before anything ships, live freight tracking, and I&D pre-flight checks on site before the freight even arrives.
The purpose of all of it? To streamline everything so completely that when something unexpected does happen, the team has the capacity to react. As Brian puts it, the one immovable deadline in trade shows is the moment those doors open.
“Even after all of those checks, everything I just talked about, we can still run into issues – crazy things that happen on the show floor that require us to react.”
– Brian Lanning, Senior Managing Director
This is where the episode earns its title. Each story is different – different cities, different crises, different cast of characters – but they share a common thread: something completely unplanned happened, and the team found a way through. Here’s a preview. The full picture is in the episode recording.
Freight Held Hostage
A client’s exhibit was in the trailer – visible, accounted for, confirmed by the freight company – but completely unreachable for six hours while another exhibitor’s damage claim was processed in front of it. A full I&D (installation & dismantle) crew on the clock. A brand-new client arriving to an empty booth space. Hear what happened next.
Half a Booth at Advance Warehouse
Sonja arrived on site in San Diego to find half the booth, with a POD confirming full delivery. What followed next was, as she said, a request for video surveillance footage at the warehouse, and a race against the clock with a client who was starting to worry.
It’s Raining. Indoors.
Brian was standing in a client’s nearly complete exhibit at McCormick Place in Chicago when the ceiling started to leak mid-storm. His response was immediate and characteristically calm. The client called them “absolute unicorns.” Listen to hear exactly what the plan was.
The Booth That Blew Over
Sonja returned to a completed, client-approved exhibit at McCormick Place the morning after setup to find it lying on its side. The dock doors had been opened overnight. The wind off the Chicago River had done the rest.
The Pigeon
Duane’s crew was doing final fit and finish on a client’s 16-foot tower – the centerpiece of a large island exhibit – when an uninvited guest arrived and made its mark straight down the graphic. You’ll want to hear this one said in Duane’s own words.
The 2,000-lb Glass Floor
Brian shares one of the most ambitious exhibits he’s ever been a part of, born from a CEO casually saying, “wouldn’t it be great if those were running?” What followed next were seven guys with suction cups, lipstick cameras, and a single pane of glass that had to be perfect. No spoilers.
The Philosophy Behind the Calm
What connects every story isn’t chaos – it’s how each person responded to it. Brian, Duane, and Sonja each describe a version of the same instinct: stay visibly calm, move decisively behind the scenes, and make sure the client never has to carry the weight of what’s happening in the moment.
“Be the duck. You’re gliding across the water, looks like nothing’s happening – but below the surface, you are paddling furiously.”
– Brian Lanning
Duane adds the relationship layer: the ability to make a call at 10 p.m. in an unfamiliar city and get a full crew back on site isn’t luck – it’s decades of relationships with I&D partners in every major trade show market. Sonja adds what people often overlook: when the crisis is resolved, the job isn’t over. Claims need to be filed, documentation gathered, and clients walked through processes they’ve never encountered before.
Who should listen? If you’re a trade show manager, exhibit coordinator, or marketing director gearing up for your first big show, this episode is 45 minutes of real-world knowledge that no training manual covers. And if you’re a veteran of the show floor with your own versions of these stories, Brian invites you to share them (use the form below), because the community that lives this knows these moments better than anyone.
Find Beyond the Booth on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes coming soon, including interviews recorded live at the Event Marketer Experiential Marketing Summit in Las Vegas.
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Tell us your trade show stories here! The good, the bad and the ugly!