It really was encouraging to read all the positive buzz surrounding the reinvented LAMMA exhibition last week. It's great to get the industry's year well and truly off and running with such a well-received event.

In the end, the organisers, AgriBriefing, said "around 40,000" people attended the NEC across the two days. In a statement put out after the halls had closed their doors, AgriBriefing group events director Elisabeth Mork-Eidem said, "UK agriculture finally has a show to rival its European counterparts and we cannot wait to start working on next year’s show to make that even bigger and better.”

Hopefully the exhibition will indeed be able to push on from here with more and more exhibitors using the show for, as Martin Rickatson put it last week, an international launch-pad for their major new products. If the content is there, the new LAMMA has proved there is indeed the appetite for an indoors agricultural machinery show at this time of the year. A comparison with the old Smithfield show was one which kept getting favourably brought up by visitors to the NEC.

It will be very interesting to keep our ears open over the coming months, to see if those who chose to stay away this year, will reverse that decision for 2020. The absentees, both manufacturers and trade associations, will no doubt have read the reports and in most cases, actually seen with their own eyes, how the show went down. Maybe they will have had their minds changed by what they saw. Perhaps they'll maintain that coming along for the second year was always their intention from the outset. Regardless, if the show can be enrichened by more well-known brands taking stands, it will make a good show, even better.

Turning our attention from agricultural to professional turfcare machinery, BIGGA's BTME show in Harrogate now has the chance to make a real impact with their re-jig next week.

By no means as radical an overhaul as LAMMA, the BTME show is held in some serious regard by those who make the trip to North Yorkshire each January, so any tinkering with the format was bound to cause a degree of trepidation. To be fair to BIGGA all they've really done is change up the hall configuration at the Harrogate International Centre, but such is the affection the show is held in, any alteration to the format was always going to cause some pre-show grumblings.

Fuel was added to the fire of these grumblings when rumours circulated that some manufacturers weren't happy with where they were allocated stand space within the exhibition's new footprint. Apparently, it wasn’t always simply a question of picking a favoured spot off a floorplan.

A quick look on the show's website and that floorplan is now available for all to see and it does confirm that there isn't a single hall with all the big machinery players in together as has traditionally been the case. The major manufacturers are indeed spread around the various halls, one assumes with the intention of making sure visitors walk around and visit all corners of the exhibition.

Hopefully for the good of the show this will play out the way the organisers intend and to the satisfaction of both visitors and exhibitors. We were told last year by the organisers that a natural flow would be created around the International Centre, with no 'dead areas' left with lonely stand holders not seeing proper footfall. Let's hope this proves to be the case next week.

As ever, if timings and circumstances within the business work out, I'd argue that a visit to trade show such as this is always beneficial. There are plenty of machinery exhibitors promising new launches which will be of interest to specialist dealers - and the networking opportunities which Harrogate affords can't be underestimated.

So good luck to BIGGA for next week, here's to a great show - and let's hope that great buzz which came out Birmingham can find its way up to Yorkshire.