The organisers of Essen Spiel produce maps for download, but not the
good ones.
The link to the maps is
here which links
in turn to a SharePoint download page. But the PDFs you can get there,
while they at least are PDFs (i.e. a proper vector format), only
give you the booth numbers, not exhibitor names. In previous years
it's usually been possible to download a programme book which has the
names too, but not now; that's only on the site.
Why not just go online and use their site, which should get updated
during the show? Because when I'm at Essen, 100,000 people are trying
to use the same few cellphone base stations, and there are times when
it just doesn't work reliably. The official Essen
app
is surprisingly not bad (i.e. it doesn't demand the Google tracking
framework to run), but it's not ideal for all purposes.
But there is an alternative. The live maps on the site are fully
labelled, even though they're only PNG bitmap images. So one can store
them away. They've tried to disable save from the browser, but if
you're going to let the user see an image, you have to let them see
the image. (I think these may be the same images the app uses.)
- Overall
plan;
- Hall
1
for RPGs and miniatures;
- Hall
2
for family games with a bit of expert and hobby games at the west end;
- Hall
3
for expert and hobby games;
- the
Galleria
the spine between the two rows of halls
- Hall
4
for expert and hobby games;
- Hall
5
for artists, non-game things to buy, trading card games, and
international publishing firms (i.e. we will print your game in
China/Korea/Poland/etc. and ship directly to your customers);
- Hall
6
for family games;
- Hall
7
for more family games;
- Hall
8
for even more family games and the biggest publishers since it's the
first place you reach on the way way in.
These maps, but not the PDFs, also list the (mostly food)
vendors in the outdoor Fairground spaces:
See you at the show! (I'll be demonstrating for Indie at 3T300 on
Thursday afternoon, Friday morning, and all day at the weekend.
Usually I'm the only one there with a beard.)