Within the last month, I’ve been to the American Institute of Architects (AIA) convention and show in Boston and the Construction Specifications Institute (CSI) convention and the new Construct show in Las Vegas, which took place last week.

I’ve been going to the AIA show for a number of years, and had gone to the CSI show, as it was then called, for a while also but hadn’t been there for the past few years.

Both are interesting, and both attract the core audience I deal with now—architects and designers or specifiers. I enjoyed the chance to meet and speak with so many architects at both shows and was very interested in the questions they asked and what their interests are.

One thing which I discerned from attending both shows is that the architects who attend each show are different people. My impression is that someone or ones in the firm go to the AIA show and some go to the CSI meeting (and now the Construct show).

The two events have in common the fact that there are strong, extensive education programs. Also, for the architects, they can get AIA learning units at both events.

Most of the architects I spoke with, particularly in Las Vegas at the CSI event, had been coming to the meeting for years and felt comfortable attending it.

This is not a New York Times scientific poll, but I am very curious if my impression is correct and some architects go to and prefer the AIA convention and other like CSI. Is this true?

Please send me an email and tell me if you prefer one over the other and why. We’ll analyze the responses and report back to you on the results.

I feel lucky. One of the perks of being an editor is I can attend both events and feel that I am just keeping up with my job in doing so. What better way to keep abreast of what architects think and are doing than to talk directly to them, whether at AIA or CSI.