A training-first exhibitor experience, designed to turn learning into business relationships
PDX is designed around a fundamentally different exhibitor experience. Instead of centralized presentations or passive booth traffic, training at PDX happens directly at exhibitor booths in short, focused sessions throughout the day. Engineers come expecting to learn practical skills, see real workflows, and engage directly with experts.
For exhibitors, this means booths are designed for conversation, demonstration, and shared problem-solving, which leads to business relationships that develop organically.
Traditional Trade Show |
PDX |
| Open-ended booth traffic | Short, scheduled booth sessions |
| Product-focused pitches | Knowledge- and workflow-driven discussions |
| Quick demos and brochures | Real examples, demos, and use cases |
| Badge scanning for lead capture | Badge scanning paired with context |
| Conversations often stay high-level | Conversations move quickly into technical depth |
What This Means for Your Booth
At PDX, your booth functions more like a mini classroom than a sales stage.
- You’ll run short training sessions at your booth throughout the day
- Engineers arrive expecting to learn and ready to be engaged
- Conversations start with how and why, not pricing or features
- This doesn’t mean avoiding your product — it means showing it in context, as part of a real engineering workflow.
This format naturally filters your audience. The engineers who spend time at your booth are self-selecting based on interest in the problem you solve — leading to higher-quality, more technical conversations.
Selling still happens. It just happens after trust is established, not before.
EXHIBITOR SHARES PRACTICAL KNOWLEDGE
Short, focused training based on real workflows, challenges, or techniques.
ENGINEERS LISTEN, ASK QUESTIONS, AND LEARN
Attendees arrive expecting education and practical insight.
ENGINEERS BRING THEIR OWN PROJECTS INTO THE CONVERSATION
Discussions naturally shift to real parts, designs, data, or problems they’re working on.
RELEVANT BUSINESS CONVERSATIONS FOLLOW
With shared context established, next steps are natural and productive.
What “Teaching” Looks Like at PDX
Teaching at PDX doesn’t mean reading through a marketing slide deck or giving a generic product overview. Effective PDX training is:
- Practical – Focused on real engineering challenges and workflows
- Hands-on or demo-driven – Showing how something works, not just that it exists
- Skill-oriented – Helping engineers leave smarter than they arrived
- Interactive – Encouraging questions, discussion, and problem-solving
Examples include:
- Walking through a real design, test, or automation workflow
- Demonstrating how to avoid common engineering mistakes
- Showing a faster or more reliable way to solve a known problem
- Using real parts, real data, or real CAD — not marketing abstractions
- Inviting attendees to interact directly with a tool, model, or setup while you guide them through the process
Hear what exhibitors from PDX 2025 had to say about their experience.
PDX wasn’t your typical trade show – it was all about hands-on learning, and we loved being a part of that energy.
Designed by engineers for engineers, the PDX conference is unique in that exhibitors create and present hands-on sessions to bring some nugget of knowledge to the community.
Really great event! Definitely not your typical “trade show.” I was really impressed with the various technologies and solutions for engineering.
The most valuable aspect of this event for us was the audience. This was the first event we attended where almost all the people we talked to were truly engineers and individuals interested in the technical aspects of the software.
The focus on training was in very good alignment with how Trimech does business. I really liked the environment encouraging attendees to ask questions and come to learn.
The small group conversations at my sessions made for better engagement than simply standing in front of a booth watching people walk by, and hopefully more memorable for those attendees
The training session format definitely felt much more engaging and personable than if we were to simply give a keynote speech or some other form of non-interactive presentations.
As a presenter of training sessions, I found people were drawn in by an ongoing session, and more likely to stop as there was no pressure to do so. They stopped because they saw other people stopped and wanted to see why.
The training sessions really helped provide visual representation to the conversations we had been having throughout the event. Gave people the opportunity to ask questions and really engage with the content and understand it on a deeper level.