Class of 2015 It is impossible to believe that it could already be 10 years since we took the first AMD industry photograph at the V-Twin Expo, but this indeed was the 10th anniversary of an idea that owes its origins to a suggestion by a friend and industry veteran, Joe Phillipson.
His original idea was what became colloquially known around the show floor as the "old farts" photo - the idea being to get pictures of Joe and the other industry lifers or "legends" before they shuffled their mortal coils!
It very quickly morphed into a much more valuable annual exercise and, as it turns out, the timing has been exquisite!
Back then, the show itself was at least twice, if not three times, the size it is now, both in terms of booth real estate and, most importantly, the number of exhibiting companies.
The changes seen in the industry since the first picture was taken in 2006 have been huge, and sadly we have lost some industry friends who have been in the pictures during that time.
As stated elsewhere in our V-Twin Expo review this year, by far the majority of the viable hard core exhibitor community still have a booth at the show, or at worst still work the show from a distributor booth, as it is the very high number of "transient" vendors that (mostly) are the ones that have gone away.
However, the picture is primarily a bit of fun, and a record of some of those who were at the show in any given year and now marks one of the closing rites of the expo on the Sunday afternoon.
As ever, our thanks to those who took part, and a "tcsh tcsh - must try harder" to those who didn't make it into the Class of 2015 yearbook.
