Membership to the Association of Gaming Equipment Manufacturers is really a no-brainer decision if you are in the business of supplying goods and services to the casino industry anywhere worldwide. While AGEM members receive nice discounts for exhibiting at G2E, G2E Asia, SAGSE and the Southern Gaming Summit, the benefits don’t end there—that’s just for starters. It’s also worth noting that Casino Enterprise Management, as an official publication of AGEM, delivers quite favorable advertising discounts to members wanting to get their brand message out in the gaming industry’s premier B2B trade journal.
The association well serves the collective interests of its membership and these interests come in many forms. New gaming jurisdictions are opening everywhere across the globe. These often come about hastily as desperate governments look for new ways to offset overwhelming budget shortfalls. Manufacturers should have influence on the rules and regulations being considered. After all, they bring with them enormous experience developed over decades of being in the business of gaming and have a vested interest in it being done right. Where there are unexpected regulatory hurdles or unrealistic issues of taxation, AGEM can often address the problem when it is faced by gaming manufacturers as a whole. AGEM has strong ties to legal and regulatory experts worldwide and can assert influence and bring expertise in situations where needed.
AGEM does important high-level work in key jurisdictions such as Illinois, Mexico and others where all suppliers have a chance to prosper and all suppliers have an obligation to chip into that effort if they would benefit from it. Even at just $1,000 as an Associate Member, a company would have some skin in the game.
Formed in 2000, the association just keeps growing year after year. Now 111 members strong, it’s obvious that AGEM serves not just the largest and most global of gaming suppliers in the gaming business, but smaller and more regional companies, too. There’s no need to go it alone, and with AGEM on your side, you won’t be.
Membership is simple and affordable, and in these tough economic times, it would be money well spent. If you haven’t spent time talking with Marcus Prater, AGEM’s executive director, about member benefits and joining yet, I strongly urge you to make time during G2E to go over to the AGEM booth. (WC2) And don’t forget to bring your checkbook because you’ll be wondering why you’ve waited so long!
Well folks, we’re at another G2E again. It seems like just yesterday I was at the Las Vegas Sands Expo making the rounds at the World Gaming Congress and Expo. It was an odd sort of feeling as it was just two weeks after the first Global Gaming Expo and just shortly after the Sept. 11 attack. Things just change, but life goes on. That was also before I launched Casino Enterprise Management, with our first issue not rolling out until January of 2003. It’s quite cliché, but I actually started everything in my mother’s garage and a 70K dollar line of credit. It was so cold out there working in the garage that first winter that I actually wore a parka while I sat at my desk making sales calls and editing articles. So I for one am really glad things change.
One of the biggest changes we have experienced over the last 10 years is the true dawn of the digital media age. That has transformed the way we do business entirely. In fact, print publishing is just one of many mediums we use to disseminate information. Today, in addition to publishing CEM for print, we offer CEM iPad apps, CEM digital editions, Internet talk radio programming on our CEM Audio Edge platform and a robust video library on our CEM Video Edge platform. It’s a philosophy that I and the CEM team live by. We make change. We don’t just wait for change to happen to us. It’s really just reinvention and it’s only a process that grows bigger and gets faster each and every day.
Please stop by the Casino Enterprise Management booth (4932) during G2E. We’d love the opportunity to tell you about what the little company that started in a garage in the winter of 2003 has done to transform the way you stay on top of your game in this business of gaming.
Peter E. Mead
Publisher,
Casino Enterprise Management