The South Hall seems to have smaller outfits, though certainly no less important. In the West Hall the exhibits might have a second floor with conference table reserved for private meetings. The South Hall is filled with booths,featuring posters and computer screens and manned by one or two people. A big West Hall exhibit might have 15 reps, all dressed in matching clothing.

South might be the little guy hall, though exhibitors over there like BASF can hardly be classified as a little guy. But there are certainly lots of interesting things in the South Hall. Like the builders’ software program for the little guy, offered by Automated Trackers (www.automatedtrackers.com). Don’t build 3,000 houses a year? You can subscribe to their Superintendent’s Automated Manager program for $200 a house.

Down South, you’ll find the SnapCourt (www.snapcourt.com) interlocking floor system, which will create a basketball court, or tennis court (the basketball bounce is quieter than the bounce on concrete). You’ll find Packer Industries (www.Packer2000.com) and the Packer 750 Horizontal Grinder that reduces your construction debris landfill footprint. You’ll find the neat skylights of Solatube (www.solatube.com), which can bend light, dissipate heat, and catch the sun from sunrise to sunset and disperse it throughout a room.

Mid Atlantic Vinyl Products (www.mvpweatherwise.com) has a nice display of its vinyl railing, fencing, decking, and columns. They may not be making customized Rawlings baseball bats for people at $40 a pop like they're doing at Delta Tools (www.deltamachinery.com) in the West Hall, but Mid Atlantic Sales Director Jim Torborg will talk to you about why he thinks Harry Homeowner is tiring of the DIY craze. (Note to DIY Network: I’m sure he is wrong.)

In the West Hall, you see lots of coats and ties; in the south, you see more knit shirts and jeans. In the West Hall, you’re likely to overhear a cell phone conversation in which the speaker is saying, “Did you get my email about the meeting?” In the South Hall, the conversation is more like, “You’ve got to get on it—she’s got water coming in over there.”

This apparent difference of styles is actually a good thing. It’s like going to two shows at once. And I haven’t even had a chance to make it to the Outside exhibits.

Entertainment celebrity also sells and choppers must sell pretty well. For example, the Orange County Chopper guy, the boss, I think, with the beefy white mustache and biceps, was going to be in the BlueLinx distributors’ (www.bluelinxco.com) booth later signing autographs. You could have your picture taken while sitting on the BlueLinx chopper that the OCC shop built. I heard a rep tell a young lady that she could climb on, “just don’t turn the steering wheel.” The Milwaukee Electric Tool (www.milwaukeetool.com) exhibit featured a big picture of the West Coast Choppers guy, with his arms full of tatoos.

At the Waltzing Waters (www.waltzingwaters.com) area, people were sitting on benches in a darkened grotto with color-lit fountain spurts of water dancing—excuse me, waltzing—to the tune of an Elvis love song. One couple was absolutely mesmerized, and I bet I could go back at 5 pm and they would still be there. Definitely a calm oasis on the floor.

But the most show-bizish exhibitor I saw had to be what I call Cirque du Kohler (www.kohler.com). They have a huge area that felt like you were inside a cushy, black velvet jewelry box. Gorgeous lighting struck plumbing fixtures and such that looked positively beautiful. Then a woman took the stage, a big stage raised about 5 feet. Music played, spotlights swam around the lady as she introduced a model, who walked out as if on a Paris fashion show runway. There was some tie in to a new line of showerheads or something (I was too flummoxed to take notes).

The model was soon gone, and the MC was talking about the upcoming lineup of celebrity appearances. But first, she introduced another act (nope, forgot their name too). Suddenly, the music became seductive, the stage lighting dimmed to red glows, and out came three buff guys carrying 10-foot poles and wearing briefs. Sure, they were theatrical costumes, but they were really black briefs. I saw the faces of several women in the audience light up. These guys started doing what can best be described as a ballet of poles. They’d swing around the pole planted on the stage floor, flip the poles around in impeccable timing, and generally made you think you were in Cirque du Soleil show.

I made my way out the back through a black curtain and was jarred out of the Kohler experience by looking up and seeing the unfinished wood of the Weyerhauser (www.weyerhauser.com) house. I felt like I had been flung back to Kansas from Oz.

They're not debuting Spider, and certainly not Apple's Nano. They’re debuting Gorilla Wrap and DuraBase. Beside the fact that for a brief interlude your new home could be covered with pictures of a snarling gorilla, apparently intent on keeping bad elements from entering your structure, this stuff has the benefit of being mold resistant, strong (it better be if you’re playing off King Kong), and energy efficient.

DuraBase is a new roofing underlayerment that offers the benefit of felt with the performance of synthetic. That is a quote from marketing materials, and I have every reason to believe them. It unrolls flat, doesn’t weigh much, and provides better coverage per roll, as well as various other attributes.

I have to admit that I am mentioning this because the Johns Manville people were very pleasant. However, no one offered to give me an iPod Nano.

I was moving along not too far away when I heard an explosion, a controlled explosion, thankfully. That was the sound of the Bostitch (www.bostitch.com) folks introducing their new product, the HurriQuake nail. On a flat table-like thing about 6 feet by 5 feet was a section of roof decking nailed to studs with the HurriQuake nail.

The explosion was the decking finally pulling free from the studs. Well, it took the equivalent strength of twice a Category 5 hurricane to do it. Living 200 yards from the Atlantic Ocean in Northeast Florida, I am acutely interested in things that resist hurricanes.

The HurriQuake is kind of the Frankenstein of nails: it has a larger head, heavier shank, ring shank on the bottom, and screw twist up top. This engineering helps eliminate the hurricane problem of roof decks being pulled off. All it takes is one sheet and the house is toast, very soggy toast. I did not meet Bostitch’s Dr. Frankenstein, but the inventor of the HurriQuake was there. He is Dr. Ed Stutt, who has a PhD in nail technology. Way to go Ed.

Gopal pointed out that about 50% of the remodeling market is affected by interest rates, and that leaves 50% of the market unaffected. “When the roof leaks,” says Gopal, “you don’t wait for interest rates to go down to fix it.” Comforting words.

Expect the condo market to be the strongest segment, partly because the high price of land forced Generation X into condos. These GenXers are spending more on home improvements than their Boomer predecessors did at the same stages of life.

And GenX likes the higher end stuff, those super kitchen appliances and other marks of high taste and quality. Even though Gen X is more DIY oriented than Boomers were, they are spending a lot with pro remodelers.

Other tidbits offered included the fact that the larger the remodeling firm, the greater its employee productivity as measured in revenue per employee. Expect an easing in the growth rate of remodeling in the first-time buyer/affordable home sector. Expect continued growth in the flowing areas, listed with the first showing the greatest growth: Kitchen/Bath, Townhouse/Condo, Custom/Luxury, Move Up Homes, and 2nd/Vacation Homes.

More later.

Moderator David Jaffee opened the seminar with the less-than good news that the last 12 years have seen an increase in construction defect litigation. Of course, the biggest and badest player is the dreaded mold. A recent California court decision awarded $27 million in bodily injury award due to mold on lumber.

Brenda’s theme was that you should always remember that you are dealing with people, and that most of the time people don’t want to be in a conflict. Bottom line: there’s lots of ways to mollify a disgruntled customer, and lots of ways to really make matters worse. The biggest no-no is to dismiss the initial complaint and ignore the homeowner’s concerns.

When such cases go to trial, the fact that the builder was initially dismissive and tried to merely put a band-aid on the problem makes the jury mad. And you don’t want that. Brenda said that studies show that 85% of jurors make up their mind about guilt or innocence within the first 5 minutes of a trial. I suppose such efficient use of mental faculties allows for increased naptime during the rest of the trial.

Andrew said that the secret to staying out of court is not to sell to crazy homebuyers. This tongue-in-cheek advice acknowledged that once in a while, you will find yourself dealing with a person who is completely unreasonable. The best approach is to make sure your customer service people are properly trained to avoid this deadly mistake. In fact, you should institute a lawsuit avoidance-training program with all your people.

They presented lots of other information, and I’ll try to report on that later. One bit of advice they two gave that you should take heed of immediately is to know that your nasty email messages among your coworkers will wind up in the plaintiff’s hands come court time. You can’t completely delete them, and please don’t ever try to or shred documents because that only makes matters worse. Best practice is to consider that every email you send is going to be shown to the world. So, don't put your true thoughts in writing if they aren't nice.

Relationships is the short answer. Dominic is director of marketing (soon to be VP of sales) for Symmons Industries (www.symmons.com), which manufactures faucets, showerheads, and other plumbing products. Relationship selling is how Symmons prefers to build its business. And to make those relationships—and strengthen existing ones—they send their top sales executives to staff their IBS exhibit.

It’s a costly approach, as executive sales time isn’t cheap. Many booths are manned by lower-level reps. Dominic says Symmons wants its top people there. That way, existing clients and potential clients know they are dealing with the top, and that what they hear is not going to be contradicted later on in the deal, if there is a deal. And that shows that Symmons is serious about its involvement in trade shows like IBS, as well as being serious about the relationship they want to build with their clients.

Symmons queries its regional reps about clients they expect to be at IBS, so the sales and marketing people from the main office (Braintree, Massachusetts, outside of Boston) are waiting for them—in a nice way. They also pre-arrange other meetings with clients.

Dominic says a lot of business is done at such dinners after the show, which is another reason to have the big guns in town for IBS. Of course, this is a key to the whole rationale for IBS. After all, anyone can see what kind of faucets you make from looking at a catalog or a website.

Even so, Dominic and his fellow Symmons reps do not shirk their floor duties. They want to be aggressively nice, to welcome you into their booth, not to look like they hope you keep walking and don’t bother them with questions, which is on display on the floor in not a few booths. Sure, there are the tire kickers, but Dominic says even they get the full-bore welcome and service. Hey, you never know when someone is going to be ordering plumbing fixtures for that condo development and remembers those go-getters at Symmons.

So it was a good day at the booth for Symmons. They had one outstanding contact that day and several good ones. In fact, the group pow-wows as the day goes on to see how they're doing. And they keep each other in high spirits. It’s not the number of visitors whose cards you scan but the quality of them. Decision makers is who they are after, be they owners, purchasers, builders, or marketers.

Today, Dominic says, they got the high traffic and the good traffic. Huzzah!

This was lawn art for the high-end market. Very high end, as the statue was $17,000, and the homeowner would have to care for the bronze piece, or at least pay to have someone to care for it.

Another exhibitor caught my eye, though its booth had little more than a poster and some handouts. But it’s presence was possibly more monumental than the bronze Four Seasons. This presenter was SourceChina (www.source-china.com), which bills itself as a Real Estate Developer’s Sourcing Solution.

It is the subtle face of globalization. The California-based rep (I am sorry, I have misplaced her name and I am no longer in the South Hall and I am not going to trot back there and risk missing the bus) told me that their services are the procurement of construction materials and goods from China sent directly to builders in the U.S. Savings on items would generally run about 30-40%, depending on the material and the volume (note: this figure is not an official SourceChina claim).

I asked if they ran into any “Buy American” resistance. The rep said once a potential buyer sees the savings, any such resistance evaporates. Besides, she pointed out, waving her arm to include the exhibitors around her, about 80% of the things they are selling are made in China anyway. SourceChina just eliminates all those middleman, American middlemen.

Rebar, steel, granite, tile, slate, plumbing fixtures, wood flooring, furniture, cement, and windows are some of the products they offer. Their reps work with Chinese manufacturers, placing orders for U.S. builders.

Potential customers need to be doing 50 houses a year at least and be able to give SourceChina some good lead time on orders. It’s not a service for a builder who needs to change options frequently or quickly. While I was hanging around, a Canadian condo builder expressed interest. He was miffed by the variation in cost of steel within even the same geographic regions. He took a handout and had the rep swipe his card for more information and future contact.

Landing a good floor space is not an element of luck. Seniority of showing at IBS gives an exhibitor certain points. And so does paying a premium for space and location. Big vendors have a big presence.

Then there are the small booths, like Rainhandler’s. Rainhandler (www.rainhandler.com) is a plastic grid about 3 inches wide that when attached right under the edge of the roof turns the stream of roof runoff back into rain drops that bounce off the Rainhandler grid and land about 3 feet away from the house. Simple: no gutter and the wind blows the leaves away.

Ted with Rainhandler says he chose the South Hall this year because they had heard that traffic there was as much as 50% better than at the West Hall. In spite of that rumor, he is seeing about the same amount of traffic as last year when he was in the West Hall.

Sometimes he thinks the small company should just stay away from the huge IBS. But then again, after displaying for 11 years now, he’s afraid of what might happen if Rainhandler were to bail out.

“It’s all about the list,” says Ted, flicking up the ticker tape that records the contacts of people whose cards he has swiped into his machine. No swipes at IBS is not something he is ready to risk.

Architects Cheryl O’Brien, Jeffrey Lake, and designer Barbara Anderson had worked out a good presentation that moved faster than most, and offered good insights. Build a design team from the start and concentrate on details and execution, say these three enthusiasts for little guy builders.

What’s hot in design, what’s new, what’s old that is new again came up frequently. Advice included get creative with the old split-level. Pay attention to the lower level, opening up stairways and space. Use materials to bring the outside inside down in the lower level.

Let’s see, it’s not “media room” any more; it’s “Audio Visual Lounge.” Some other rhetorical changes you may want to adopt: it’s not a deck, it’s a Viewing Deck (and put an exterior fireplace in it and some nice furniture on it); the old parlor is now an Evening Room; the standby kitchen may become a Gourmet Gallery; a study is a Creative Enclave. I’m sure you can come up with your own (my bedroom will now be known as my Restorative Chamber).

Aside from inventive nomenclature, these three had some great advice. I’ll dole out more details later.

I can report that it is possible to get from the South Hall to the West Hall in 6 minutes without breaking into a run. I’ll hit the 5-minute mark before this thing is over. For now, back to the South Hall. I have a full 14 minutes to get there.

“I’m not looking to steal their trade secrets,” says Bob, who asked that I not use his name or mention his company (I don’t think he was kidding). “I want to see how they present themselves: how they interact with potential customers, what image they are trying to project.”

And of course, Bob does check out what they are selling. But he adds that if you think you’re going to uncover secrets from a booth at a huge trade show, you’re way too late.

Another gentleman was there to do some cross-department mixing. This rep from a building supply company says he always deals with his clients’ purchasing people. But at IBS, he seeks out the marketing reps of those clients. He had a productive lunch with one marketing manager Wednesday. Such connections—and the different perspective of his client company—helps keep him a step ahead.

And then I spoke to a guy who rattled off an extensive list of friends and family members who made the trek to Orlando for the purpose of entertainment, golf, and a side-trip to the beaches of Daytona. He came to IBS early and was leaving late, going to meetings and networking throughout the week. Doing business in a pleasurable way. He was not missing the Wisconsin winter and looked relaxed in his floral-print shirt, shorts, and sandals.

Seems a lot of builders are also interested in moisture. The room was full for the Moisture Management Trends in Residential Construction seminar presented by CertainTeed (www.certainteed.com). I’d say about 300 people listened to Stanley Gatland and Mark Williams hold forth on moisture. Mark’s Power Point quoted an Italian builder from 600 years ago who was not happy about what rain was doing to buildings back then. Mark said that in many ways, we’re not that much further along today.

Mark’s focus was moisture and exterior walls. Case studies of water damage to various wall surfaces in various areas of the country show that water is not easy to tame. Without going into great detail, the best practice is to give the water space so it can drain and the wall will dry out. Water’s going to get in, so give it room between the cladding and the substrate to get out. Another theme was that water goes through staple and nail holes in wall wrap like, um, well, it goes through pretty easily.

Stanley spoke about research on vented crawl spaces and sealed crawl spaces, and vapor retarding in general and in specific. Code changes are likely going to be coming down the pike in this regard. He also spoke a bit about smart vapor retarders, which change their permeability as the level of humidity changes.

Lots of questions after the seminar for both of these gentlemen dragged us on to around 5:15. The exhibit halls were emptying out the last stragglers, cleaning crews were appearing in greater numbers, and some men were observed drinking beer in the main hallway. All sure signs that the day is winding down. And as I consider that I am tired and feeling intellectually threatened by smart vapor retarders, I better catch a shuttle back to the hotel to seek a different level of humidity. . .perhaps in the pool.

When listening through the door didn’t work, I snagged a handout of what I hope Dr. Shinn (he has a PhD) was talking about inside. Number one on the list is Get Rid of Bad Deals. Number 3: Fall Out of Love With Your Houses. Other topics include Improve Purchasing, Maintain Construction Schedules (bullet point 2 is consistency before speed), and How Much Profit Can You Make? (You should be averaging 10-15%.)

Dr. Shinn (www.shinnconsulting.com) has some good ideas that I think I will follow up on later. He must be an efficient speaker to cover all the topics he had on his handout in one hour. He is a consultant and offers seminars around the country. Perhaps the big crowd was the result of builders seeking to increase their profitability by hearing the consultant at IBS for free.

I wandered briefly into the South hall, where I tested my skill at the Hilti wheel of swag. Spin the wheel and get a pencil, a tee shirt, a knife. I wanted the knife, and I spun right to it. After such good luck, I decided to pass on testing a Hilti (www.us.hilti.com) drill in a block of concrete. I’m sure it would have bored true. My knife is very sharp, and colorful.

The booths are neat, the carpet still clean, and stacks of brochures are tall. A full 10 minutes into the show and the Medi-Rub massage exhibition is already quite popular. Foot pads massage feet with shoes on. Assistants hold the Body Massager (think power sander) on people’s shoulders, backs, calf muscles. I’ll wait until day two.

First mistake: check which hall seminars are in. My plan to hit a marketing awards seminar then scoot into a talk on building for the 55+ market is foiled when I realize one is in the South Hall, one is in the West. This is a 15 minute walk at least along an impressive walkway concourse. So, I change plans and duck into the Opening ceremonies.

A dark hall filled with at least 6,000 people listens to Colin Powell, who is in the middle of his speech. The stage, with bridge-like structures, brick chimneys, soft lights, and A Statue of Liberty (replica) on the left side and a Washington Monument to the right swallows Powell at the podium. Thanks for the 4 big-screen monitors.

The former Secretary of State and General is a funny guy. He’s talking light-heartedly about diplomatic affairs, and is getting more laughs than a Jay Leno monologue. He tells stories about needing the king of Morocco to agree to resolve a crisis with Spain immediately so Powell can play with his grandkids in the pool. The U.S. is in a 200 year marriage with France, only the last few years have been in marriage counseling. The Japanese Prime Minister is awed with Powell only after he tells the PM that he used to know Elvis Presley. He jokes about recently being wanded at an airport security check point, and when the security guy recognizes him, Powell says maybe he should be looking for Osama Bin Laden.

He pulls no punches about problems but is staunchly optimistic. The General rouses everyone with pride in the United State’s openness, warmth, and friendliness. We’re in global competition now, and we’ll win this Competition of the Mind, says Powell. Because Americans, and particularly people like builders, know how to innovate. The speech ends and people move toward the door, fired up about being builders at the International Builders’ Show.

Colin Powell is the Opening Ceremony keynote speaker, and I expect the General to provide some valuable insight for my rapid assault on the vast spaces of the Orange County Convention Center. My daily blogs on HGTVPro.com will, I hope, convey the true sense of attending this massive show.

I’ll cover the floor exhibits, ask penetrating questions of marketers, and report on seminars about construction codes and customer service. And if necessary, I’ll even evaluate Friday’s lunch in the pressroom courtesy of Marvin—assuming that I can eat it on the run.