Sept. 21, 2016, 9:16 a.m. -  Tehllama42

#!markdown Wow, awesome. I'll try and clarify what I can, hopefully it's reasonable or at least achievable… then I just hope I'm not in the extreme minority for what sort of content I like best. OEM stuff - it isn't so much wanting to know behind-the-curtain or pricing stuff, but trying to make some generalizations about how the bike brands are picking parts for complete builds. Are the SRAM-heavy ones running generally consistent drivetrain/fork/brake combinations (e.g. NX shifter/GX RD & Cassette, DB5 brakes, Yari + Monarch/Deluxe R), or are certain areas of the bikes being up-specced more frequently (seeing more GuideR brakes on budget builds, or seeing some DeluxeRT and RT3 shocks on newer designs even down to entry level units). The other part is how much cross-brand mix-and-match is going on. Are bikes running Shimano/SRAM cockpit parts more often, or are house brand and smaller brand droppers/bars/stems more visible on some bikes across product lines - and are those primarily at the higher price points, or the lower price points? The other big one of those are wheelsets - are house branded wheelsets becoming more common, or are name brands primarily in aftermarket popping up as more common out-of-the-box offerings (Stan's, RaceFace, etc.) - and similarly is this something that's biased towards one side of the overall pricing scheme or another. I'm not really after raw pricing, so much as being able to keep track of which new products are going to show up in mid-entry level price bikes, which things are going to be high end/niche items, and which things are likely destined to be aftermarket-only things. That's often pretty hard to tell, and still might be considering that anybody there to show it off is going to have some optimism bias about market penetration. Another far more general question that is probably beyond the scope of a trade show is what price point certain big-hitter components start to appear, and which companies seem to make that happen at lower points. Might be an unreasonable ask, but mentally I like to keep track of what the price threshold is where bikes are coming with the top end spec for Tires and Suspension (e.g. I know I want a bike with Exo/TR/(3C) Minions, and either Lyric/Pike RCT3 + Monarch(+) R(C/T)3, or Fox36/34 + FloatX(2) Kashima - and if some of these have an asterisk elsewhere on the specification to hit that price point (e.g. down-specced drivetrain or omitted dropper post). This might be far more general, and fit in less well for the tradeshow rotation, but for new part releases, I'm usually trying to see what price point specific things will (and won't) show up at. I figure that videos are stupid time-consuming to produce for how short they are - but even minimum effort gopro time lapses. The big galleries are still something I'm quite fond of - but when stuff is kinda dead (as it sounds like Interbike is this year), some of the more lifestyle/vibe stuff or just covering the light-hearted jackassary that characterizes trade shows is cool stuff. I'd also be totally down with super-brief interviews in text - especially just the sound-bite stuff from company representatives about what specifically they're trying to achieve at both the trade show you're there at, but what they're looking to accomplish for the year as a whole.