There were over 4,000 visitors for the one day event.
Registration starts at 7:30am and the first 350 attendees to register will receive a door gift.
There was already a queue forming as early as 7:00am and by 7:30am, the queue was snaking all the way to the end of the exhibition hall.
There were about 20 stations for attendees to scan their QR code sent to their email addresses when they registered.
Registration was fast but there was a slight commotion when the queue was broken into three lines and some queuing behind ended up registering before those in front.
I noticed that there was a queue forming at one of the exhibitors' booth and went to check it out out of curiosity.
It turned out these people were queuing to receive free gift in exchange for filling up a survey form. They also get to enter into a lucky draw by finishing a few activities during the event. The more activities one completes, the more chances he or she gets by dropping the tear out from a booklet that comes in the bag that was given out at registration.
These people must either be seasoned attendees at this event to expect this or they have ran through the bag quickly to find out about this.
It took me a while to figure out that there is a passport booklet which you can get them stamped at all the exhibitors' stands. You can exchange it for a lucky draw spin after getting all the stamps.
Very soon, queues started forming at all the exhibitors' stands.
As with all shows, there were freebies given out.
Some exhibitors were giving out free vouchers for completing survey. Some have spinning wheels for prizes. There were laptop cover, tee shirts, popcorn, chocolate bar, stress balls and pens.
And it's not difficult to find out which exhibitors' freebies are perceived to be of higher value. Just find the ones with longer queue. The more desirable your freebie, the more people you are able to attract to your booth.
Everybody were busy queuing to get their booklet stamped and collect their freebies.
Looking at the overwhelming number of people, these exhibitors also devised a faster way to expedite the queue. The staff will go down the queue and scan the QR code on your pass (to capture our details) and hand out survey forms, if any, so that by the time you reach the counter, they just need to collect the form and stamp on your booklet.
While waiting in a queue to get my booklet stamped at an exhibitor's booth, a staff came down the line and started to scan our passes.
He said to me, "I don't like the queuing thing."
I guessed he must have meant that a lot of time is wasted with all these people queuing up to stamp their booklet, which could be better used in giving demonstration of their services or serious business talks.
No doubt there are many people who were not going around to have their booklets stamped. But there are surely a lot a lot more queuing to stamp their booklets.
That's when I decided to do a test.
I wanted to see how long it takes for me to get my booklet completed.
So I devised a strategy myself.
I went for the shortest queue or the one where the queue seemed to be moving much faster.
I spent the whole morning going round queuing and getting my booklet stamped until it was almost time for the event to starts.
I needed two more stamps to complete the booklet.
Just when everybody started going into the event hall, I popped by one exhibitor and asked for the stamp.
The lady told me they have stopped it as the event was starting soon and to come back later during the break.
During the break, the queuing started again and by the time the next session started, a lot of people were still queuing outside.