In particular, BIAC 2012 was never held because it was foolishly planned around the 20th of August, when Estonians are in holydays. The agenda was a very badly introduced list of totally casual and completely unrelated arguments, as the invitation shown below demonstrates. The advertisement to the event has been zero and the scarce communications were full of orthographic, grammatical and language mistakes, as you can clearly see in the picture. In only half day they pretended to speak about manufacturing and process automation, energy automation, Building Automation and logistic automation, with many other sub-arguments. And who was going to introduce these arguments? With what kind of authority? It's impossible to know it: there is no mention about this detail in the invitation.
Result (that I can directly witness because, being in Tallinn, I went to look): no exhibitors, no visitors (no one! Not 1 or 2 visitors... no! No one!), only money thrown away by the organizer and some backhander payed to a well know local mafioso. The latter could do something, at least, for the money he got. No, he didn't. The mafioso disn't bring a single visitor to the phantasmal BIAC 2012. And, by the way, he didn't came to visit BIAC himself.
And what about the media partners that you can see on the invitation? Many of them just are not real! Virtual Instrument & Tech magazine was only an advertisement page published inside Ecodesign magazine, announcing a new media. But Virtual Instrument & Tech magazine has never been published. How could be a media partner of BIAC 2012, in this case? The same is true for Trasporti magazine: this media never existed, how could it be a media partner? And the address shown under 'Local Office' is the address of a private house in Tallinn, where no 'VAV Department' exists.
BIAC 2013, again planned during the summer and with an agenda ranging from the electric bicycle (that wasn't shown, anyway) to the waste water management, was even worse. As a direct witness, I can say that no visitor came, though the big hotel that was chosen for the exhibition was full of guests.
Here is the invitatio:
Again, unreal media partners. And here is the inside of the invitation, again full of mistakes and real bloopers (some of them can't be seen because of resolution):
Interesting the 'Coffee break' at end of the day and not during the afternoon as a break should be. But this is only a detail. Let's look at some pictures.
Here is the registration table, late in the morning. The list of names written on the paper block is really rich. And things didn't change during the whole day.
This is the entrance of the room where the conferences should be held. It's about 11.00a.m., nobody is there. Even the rich welcome buffet and the free lunch offered afterwards in the excellent restaurant of Sokos Viru Hotel were not enough to attract a single visitor.
Let's look at the conference room. We are in the middle of the working time, as the sun light that is visible from windows also demonstrates. There are many free places, isn't it?
Really disarming. Yet, the ground was favourable, because Estonia is an open Country to anybody is willing to talk about new arguments or to show new products. Only the total disorganization, an agenda without any interest for the local market and the usual local mafioso involved again could led to a full, indisputable and irreversible flop.
Therefore, BIAC is dead forever, even before it was born. This is better, probably: the 'BIAC' acronym referred to 'BIAS', the big automation and instrumentation fair that used to be held in Milano, Italy. Also BIAS, in the end, was dead (really, it was killed, but this is another question). And, if you look in depth, the reasons were not so different compared to the reasons that caused the abort of BIAC. The destiny is in the name, probably.
In conclusion. Let's try to wear the dresses of an Estonian. It's the 20th of July, schools are closed and many families are already in holydays. Moreover, it's saturday, a holy day that in Estonia is devoted to shopping. From Italy a company comes that nobody heard before. With an invitation full of mistakes, this company announces an exhibition/conference about a rabblement of arguments, many of which have no relation with the estonian market. Electric bicycle? In a Country where there is half meter of snow during some months of the year? And on the invitation there aren't the names of the speakers, there is no local reference, there are no attracting personalities. Only an italian guest is mentioned that, by the way, will arrive from Tallinn airport only at 5.00 p.m., therefore when the event is theoretically finished (the delay was planned, because the air tickets were bought by the organizer).
Now, tell me: would you have gone to BIAC 2013 if you were invited? I think that you wouldn't, even if you were some retired people with nothing to do, apart the usual bowling game. Even knowing that the lunch was free and that you could take the paper block and the pen away at the end. Unfortunately, somebody had to go because of work. And he was not paid. Yes: BIAC wasn't held but it made some victim, anyway, those that worked for nothing.