AARP, one of the world's largest member organizations, counts 1.2 million Hispanics among its members. But when it launched its first national Hispanic event, Feria de la Segunda Juventud (Festival of the Second Youth), AARP conservatively estimated 8,000 registrants. Instead, more than double that number - 16,400 members and guests - attended the event, visiting more than 60 vendors on the 40,000-square-foot exhibit floor at the Puerto Rico Convention Center in San Juan this past May 6-7.

Attendees navigated their way on the exhibit floor and were guided to all the event's activities with the help of a map produced by Map Network. Ernest Rosemond, AARP's director of sponsorships and exhibits, said he favors the Map Network format, because "program guidebooks can be unwieldy for attendees. It's easier to take a smaller map with them to guide them on the exhibit floor, plus provide program information about all of the activities off the exhibit floor. For our organization, the map is also a great marketing opportunity for exhibitors and a way to thank our major sponsors." For the Feria de la Segunda Juventud event, the map had six ads, promoted AARP's next show in September in Boston, and provided contact information for AARP's local state office in Puerto Rico. Key sponsors for the event included Walgreens, UnitedHealth Group, and Banco Popular.

According to Rosemond, the map was something of a bilingual challenge. "In hindsight, we should have made the map piece larger," he said. "We were thinking that it was one of our smaller events, so we could go with a smaller map layout, but a larger format would have made it easier to read the print in both English and Spanish. One of the translation challenges we had was for the English terms we take for granted. One of our exhibitors was 'putt putt golf' which is synonymous in the states with miniature golf, but that does not translate into Spanish. We just had to be mindful of these things."

Syd Rivera, CASE, senior national sales manager of Map Network, said its maps are customizable because organizations have different goals. For the AARP show, locals didn't need a city map, but translation was very important for attendees and exhibitors. Last-minute changes had to be made to the map to revise translations, and 10,000 additional maps had to be printed for the increased registration. Rivera said they scrambled to finish a two-week job in three days.

The map has taken on a much greater role at trade shows, Rivera said. Associations use the map to market their show, give exhibitors more value, and generate revenue. "They make revenue generation a real science," he said. From business card-sized ads, to advertising on the back panel of the map as a premium sponsorship, to highlighting the listing or adding a company logo - if an advertiser wants to stand out, they have a multitude of choices. Advertisers can also add a line from their listing to the diagram, showing attendees where they are positioned on the map.

Maps can also be provided in interactive online formats. Check out the customized map for the 233rd American Chemical Society National Meeting & Exposition, March 25-29 in Chicago, at http://map.mapnetwork.com/tradeshow/chicago/acs/.

° Michelle Russell is editor and Peggy Swisher is managing editor, Convene.