What’s all the “To-Do” about at the OFA Short Course?

Woodbine, MD - July 2004 - People are planning for the OFA Short Course before they arrive this summer, thanks to an exciting new search tool provided by the Green Industry Yellow Pages, (GIYP.com). Before they arrive in Columbus, Ohio on July 10th, attendees and exhibitors can simply point and click on the ToDo List (www.ofa.org) from any home computer to interactively search the show’s exhibitor directory by company or product, create follow up notes, and create a map that identifies booth numbers and locations.

“It’s very difficult to approach a trade show of OFA’s size without some kind of game plan,” says GIYP data manager Tom Neff. “And walking the floor with a printed directory is really not an efficient game plan, either.”

Neff says that GIYP.com has powered the ToDo utility for a number of other trade shows (such as MANTS and Southeast Greenhouse Conference), and among GIYP’s vast offering of research applications, ToDo has become one of the most popular.

Using GIYP’s ToDo requires only mouse skills – point and click. “You begin by clicking on ‘Green Industry Yellow Pages’ from the OFA Short Course drop down menu located at OFA’s home page at www.ofa.org,” Neff explains. “From there you are taken to the show’s directory, where you can either use a ‘search box’ or simply click on the category of exhibitors.”

“For example,” Neff says, “clicking on the wholesale category ‘Nursery Companies’ produces a listing of all the wholesale nursery companies that are exhibiting at the event. Registrants select the specific companies they want to visit, note next to each one what they wish to accomplish – say ‘pick up catalogue’ – and when they’ve finished with that category, click on the “update my to-do list,” followed by the ‘view my to-do list’ button, and they will have a printable copy in hand of each company, product and activity to be accomplished for each, including a diagram identifying the exhibitor’s booth location on the show’s floor plan.”

“We’re excited about our new partnership with GIYP,” says Wendy McAtee, Director – Expositions for OFA. “This interactive tool will make attending our show a much more productive and efficient experience both for our exhibitors and registrants, by allowing attendees to create their own lists of what to see and where to visit before they even arrive.”

“Search utilities such as ToDo have helped GIYP become the green industry leader in searchable database directory applications,” says GIYP founder and CEO Steve Cissel.

GIYP.com was founded in 1999 as a directory utility for the green industry to bridge the gap between the message and the target audience by influencing undecided buyers and driving decisive buyers to suppliers. It currently contains information on over 150,000 businesses and over 25,000 plants. Visit www.giyp.com or e-mail at inquire@giyp.com. Phone: 888-999-5133 or call the Garden Media Group at (610) 388-9330 for more information.