EXPOCAD (R) by A.C.T. Inc

Name: EXPOCAD (R) by A.C.T. Inc
Address: 69 S. LaSalle Street, Aurora, IL, 60505, US
Telephone: (630) 896-2281

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EXPOCAD (R) by A.C.T. Inc

EXPOCAD® is the professionals’ choice for graphical event management and marketing software in the trade, corporate and consumer show industries since 1986.

EXPOCAD® is the professionals’ choice. Our suite of software products are used by the most elite show organizers and general service contractors in the world. They successfully create, manage and market their global events with an EXPOCAD® solution on platforms that range from the desktop to the internet to mobile devices. Designed by professionals for professionals, our products are seamlessly in

tegrated, dimensionally accurate and rich with revenue creating features. From the smallest table top show to the largest events on 3 continents, nearly $1 billion dollars in space is managed by an EXPOCAD® solution annually. Our suite of products includes exclusively designed software for the general service contractor community to professional show organizers in the trade, corporate and consumer industries. Email [email protected] or visit www.expocad.com

06/05/2026

The 40th anniversary of EXPOCAD® is a lot of fun to go back through our archives and resurrect good memories of times past. When you're a new event tech company, where do you go to market your products? A trade show, of course!

In Phoenix, AZ, on 12/6/1990, the first educational session on ‘Electronic Floorplans for Exhibitions’ was held. We were members of NAEM in 1988, and Don Walters, Executive Director, wanted us to present in 1990. Projectors were outrageously expensive. As a startup, we need help to finance such an educational session. NAEM offered to pay for the Sony projector. It was as big as a table. 3 huge lenses with 2 setup techs to get it to work. We held the educational session for a standing-room-only crowd, with the overflow lining the hallway outside. NAEM/IAEM/IAEE was the clear winner for us! That day was an amazing experience.

NAEM Houston, we exhibited in 1988. Cost: $1500. Bring a check to Scott Stanton (), Director of Strategic Alliances. In 1991, NAEM gave our name out to the American Bankers Association. We had established ourselves soundly with show management that were ready for online floor plans, streamlined sales, and operations. We would never stop exhibiting with IAEE and still do so today. We had many themed booths over the years, but here are a few.

In 1995, we exhibited, and I was working at the booth by myself. The booth was so busy that one of our customers, Richard Willie of IFT, took pity on me and helped me work the booth. He volunteered his labor during the entire IAEM event.

In 1997, we had our first large-screen monitor. It weighed 100 lbs. We were off and running with almost 10 years of EXPOCAD® on the market. Notice the laptop! In both the 1995 booth and the 1997 booth, the Expocard lead retrieval system was in the booth. We enjoyed years between both of us as EXPOCAD and Expocard.

In 1998, we jumped our graphics big time with two banners for our administrative software and our online software VR2 (virtual trade show floor plan on the web) 🙂 I make an appearance as the booth talent!

In 2005, we started doing thematic booth graphics to illustrate a marketing point and increased our booth space to 10 x 30. At this booth, we were discussing the full-spectrum offering of our products in the exhibition management space. Susie Wilson () and Patricia Money () are working the booth. Patty is talking to Don Svehla () ( ) with Exhibit City News.

2011 continued doing themed booth space, focusing on the difference between our software and others, which is black and white. Many attendees had a good time playing the piano!

2012 was our first time working at a booth in China. With our Pacific Rim partners, Infosalons, we had the opportunity to market in China. We already had established customers in China, but Infosalons allowed us a presence there. Thank you to Jo-Anne Kelleway () and Gu Xuebin () for all your help over the years.

2015 brought a change to the marketing effort. With Expo Expo exhibition days running through Wednesday, what else could you do? A stuffed toy camel is attracting customers to our booth with the Hump Day Camel. This picture was taken on Tuesday. We changed the sign the next day. Our CFO, Sandy Spang (), was just a bit miffed when I turned in my expenses with a purchase of a camel! Here I am wearing our 29ish t-shirt celebrating our 30th anniversary!

2025 continued the AI theme. We added AI to EXPOCAD two weeks after OpenAI released ChatGPT to the public in November 2022. With AI tools to help exhibitors, attendees, and organizers. We bought into IAEE’s theme of Houston, the Space City, and cowboys. Here we are as Space Cowboys. I think I may have aged a bit over 30 years. (I’m 140 in Tradeshow years!)

05/23/2026

Hollywood came to our office in 2008. A movie partially filmed in the Aurora area had a scene filmed on our street. The film crew turned our office into an A & P Food Mart. They worked for a week transforming our street into a 50’s era set. They filmed for another week, with movie staff standing by in our offices to prevent us from walking out into a scene. It really was amazing to watch the process. The build-out was done to a much higher quality than we expected. They moved in shelving units, stocked them with food from the 50’s, which occupied about 20 feet from our windows into the office. Props of penny scales, sales posters, bicycles, an A & P sign hung from the façade, and A & P logos hand-painted onto the glass.
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For years afterward, people would come to the A & P on the street. Which disappeared as quickly as it was built. The effort to transform LaSalle St., Aurora, into a 50’s street with a Greyhound Bus terminal across the street, dress store, hardware store, and much more was used in the film for about 15 seconds! Now, I know why Hollywood productions can be so expensive. What an effort for such a little bit of the actual movie!

The movie, The Express, starring Dennis Quade and Rob Brown, is about the first black Heisman Trophy winner. This biopic focused on the relationship of Ernie Davis (1939-1963), a gifted African American athlete, and his coach from 1958 to 1962 at Syracuse University, Ben Schwartzwalder (1909-1993). Schwartzwalder recruits Davis with the help of All-American running back Jim Brown. The civil rights movement is gaining steam; Davis experiences prejudice on campus, in town, and on the field, sometimes from teammates. How he handles it and how he challenges Schwartzwalder to stand up for his players provide a counterpoint to several great seasons that lead first to a national championship and then to the Heisman Trophy. (jhailey) (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0469903/?ref_=ext_shr_lnk )

05/09/2026

Outsold Amazon - EXPOCAD Celebrating 40 Years

In January 1999, an online space assignment was held. The space assignment meeting was normally held onsite, but this time the online option was key. Chadd Nelson was the lead technician who got it all working that day. It was a big step in event technology.
Using EXPOCAD®’s award-winning online interactive floorplan VR2, exhibitors could see the current state of space sales in their browser. As exhibitors picked their space, the up-to-date floor plan could be viewed by the next exhibitors, allowing them to pick in priority-point order.

At the time, we thought it was the world’s largest e-commerce event and the largest online exhibit sales event. But in today’s world of good search engines and abundant information, we discovered that the NAFEM/Smith Bucklin/EXPOCAD space assignment was the 2nd-largest e-commerce event that day. The first was Dell Computers, which made more than $3 million, but who was 3rd that day? Amazon! We outsold Amazon! 😊
Here is the original press release!

04/10/2026

The Singularity is Near #4 of 40
Mike Ososky was never the guy on stage.
As a founder and President of ACT/EXPOCAD®, he led development. He is the architect behind the platform. While others handled the spotlight. As Rich Stone liked to say, “We don’t let Mike out from behind the curtain too often… and he doesn’t mind at all.” He really didn’t.
For over 22 years, Mike mentored students at IMSA IMSA Home | Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy through the SIR program, not by teaching them to code, but by teaching them how to think. AI, consciousness, evolution, the future of intelligent systems… nothing was off limits.
His classroom? The Roundhouse Restaurant in Aurora. Roundhouse | Two Brothers Brewing Lunch first. Then hours of conversation.
Students came prepared having read Kurzweil the Kurzweil Library, Hofstadter Douglas Hofstadter | Philosophy Department, Dawkins Fellow Detail Page | Royal Society, Bostrom Nick Bostrom’s Home Page building a futurist vision and what it means for humanity. Mike didn’t give answers. He pushed questions:
• What is intelligence?
• Can machines think?
• What happens when they do?
When the students’ final papers were submitted and presented, they were to packed rooms. Every year their papers were one of the most anticipated of all the scientific presentations. That same mindset shaped EXPOCAD from the beginning. Long before “event tech” was a category, Mike was already thinking ahead. Building systems that assumed a more connected, more intelligent, more automated future. Many of those ideas are now standard. To Mike, mentoring students and building technology were the same thing: Understand the future.
EXPOCAD 40-year anniversary.

03/26/2026

The Singularity is Near

Mike Ososky was never the guy on stage.

As a founder and President of ACT/EXPOCAD®, he led development. He is the architect behind the platform. While others handled the spotlight. As Rich Stone liked to say, “We don’t let Mike out from behind the curtain too often… and he doesn’t mind at all.” He really didn’t.

For over 22 years, Mike mentored students at IMSA Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy through the SIR program, not by teaching them to code—but by teaching them how to think. AI, consciousness, evolution, the future of intelligent systems… nothing was off limits.

His classroom? The Roundhouse Restaurant in Aurora. Lunch first. Then hours of conversation.

Students came prepared having read Kurzweil, Hofstadter, Dawkins, Bostrom. Mike didn’t give answers. He pushed questions:

What is intelligence?

Can machines think?

What happens when they do?

When the students’ final papers were submitted and presented, they were to packed rooms. Every year their papers were one of the most anticipated of all the scientific presentations. That same mindset shaped EXPOCAD from the beginning. Long before “event tech” was a category, Mike was already thinking ahead. Building systems that assumed a more connected, more intelligent, more automated future. Many of those ideas are now standard. To Mike, mentoring students and building technology were the same thing: Understand the future.

EXPOCAD 40-year anniversary.

02/27/2026

Rich Stone speaks to Tradeshow Sales professionals about AI at Lippman Connects, Exhibits Sales Roundtable 2026. Rich has been speaking about AI for the trade show industry for 3 years. Just two months after OpenAI released ChatGPT in November 2022, for the world to use. 3e By EXPOCAD(r) had AI features in 2022, only 2 weeks after release, to help show organizers and exhibitors easy composition to multi-level listings and exhibitor sales acquisition. EXPOCAD products continue to lead the industry with the latest technologies.

40 years of invention and event leadership.
EXPOCAD, the inventor of eventtech.

02/26/2026

ACT, inc. (corporate entity) started with the Ososky brothers — three engineers with very different backgrounds.

Paul Ososky (d. 2019), a plastics engineer, became the company’s first CEO. As the company's President, Mike Ososky, a process engineer and programmer, focused on building parallel process control systems for refineries.

Peter Ososky and Rich Stone joined the company about a year later. Peter Ososky, a programmer, later wrote the first automated booth-drawing commands that helped launch EXPOCAD®. Rich was the ‘sales guy’ which was a complete career change but a good move as he never has a shortage of things to say. He was sent to the principal's office in 4th grade for talking in class.

None of us came from the trade show industry. That turned out to be an advantage. We weren’t constrained by “how it’s always been done.” We were focused on how technology should work.

We represented many products specifically for PC engineering systems. Stay tuned for our customer list from 1989. We made a mark in engineering technology by attaching data to graphics.

We sold hardware, systems integration, and engineering software for PC’s to some of the largest companies and government entities in the world. Little did we know where we were headed. But then we did our first tradeshow…

40 Years ~ Founded 1986 ~ EXPOCAD 40

02/20/2026

Our first! office wasn’t a startup incubator or a fancy suite.

It was a closet in a house on the main drag of Aurora, Illinois. Two people barely fit. If someone needed to leave, the other had to step outside first. But it was enough to get started — and that’s all we needed.

That was headquarters. Then we kept growing and growing. Bigger rental offices then we bought a building!

12/18/2025

IAEE EXPO! EXPO! was a success!

06/17/2025

Sales rep Jason in action, showcasing ELI – Event Location Intelligence at ECEF in DC last month.

Address

69 S. LaSalle Street
Aurora, IL
60505

Telephone

(630) 896-2281

Website

http://www.expocad.com/

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