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CEW, formerly KioskCom and The Digital Signage Show, shuttered

Customer Engagement World, the trade show formerly known as Customer Engagement Technology World — and before that as KioskCom and The Digital Signage Show — has been shut down.

December 31, 2014

Customer Engagement World, the trade show formerly known as Customer Engagement Technology World — and before that as KioskCom and The Digital Signage Show — has been shut down.

Joel Davis, the founder and CEO of CEW show organizer JD Events, confirmed in an email that "JDE has restructured its event portfolio for 2015 and has decided to discontinue production of CEW in order to focus additional resources into new emerging markets with greater growth potential."

According to the JDE website, the company acquired KioskCom in 2005, also hiring show manager Lawrence Dvorchik, who launched and developed the show for events company IQPC. KioskCom was a four-time winner of Tradeshow Week Fastest 50 Award, honoring the fastest growing tradeshows in North America, and the world’s largest kiosk and self-service event, the company said. 

KioskCom and the co-located The Digital Signage Show were held twice yearly, in the spring in Las Vegas and in the fall in New York City. In 2010 the two shows merged into Customer Engagement Technology World, refocusing the events on cross-channel customer engagement technology programs, including kiosk, digital signage and mobile technologies, among others.

For the inaugural CETW, and for one more year after that, the show moved its spring show to San Francisco, before moving to one show a year, the fall New York City show, and canceling the spring show, which had been scheduled to move back to Las Vegas.

That move came in the wake of a natural disaster that also took its toll on the show, when CETW fought through and stayed open in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy in New York City.  

Dvorchik referred all questions regarding the shutdown to JDE, but said in an email, "I am looking forward to my next adventure, whatever that may be, and … I wish everyone at JD Events nothing but the best. A class crew and great people."