Five Days at SMX
The 117th PDA Annual Convention and Scientific Sessions ran from May 11 to 15, 2026 at the SMX Convention Center in Pasay City. DentaSource Direct took Booths 301 and 302 for the full five days, and added Booths 281 and 282 by the fourth.
We posted the announcement on May 11 and then filmed from the floor on three of the five days, with a closing reel a few days after the hall emptied. This article puts all of it in order.
Arriving at the Hall
The first reel starts outside: the SMX facade, then the convention entrance under the 117th Annual Convention and Scientific Sessions banner, then the booth itself with the team already set up.
Inside, the display was built around three things: a chair, an endodontic bench, and a microscope. The turquoise ROSON unit was the piece people walked toward first, which is usually how a chair earns its place at a convention. It is the only item on the stand a dentist can sit in.
An apex locator and endo motor bench takes longer to explain than a chair does. An apex locator reads the electrical resistance at the tip of a file to tell the operator where the root canal ends, which is the measurement that decides how far an instrument should go. Dentists tried the units on the counter rather than taking our word for the readings.
The Redmi Pad 2 on the counter was the booth raffle prize for the week.
Midweek
By May 13 the queue at registration was still forming every morning and the hall was at full traffic. The second reel opens there and then comes back to the stand.
Midweek is when the conversations get more specific. Fewer brochures handed out, more questions about delivery, installation and what a full operatory actually costs to put together.
Day Four, Four Booths
On May 14 we were running Booths 281, 282, 301 and 302. The fourth reel is almost entirely demonstrations: a Denjoy device being run through its paces at the counter, a chair feature being pointed out to a group, visitors taking turns at the demo table.
The Close
The final reel was posted on May 18, after the hall had been packed away. It runs from the booth back out to the SMX facade, past the PDA Empowered emblem, the balloon drop and the officers on stage, and closes on the two pieces that drew the most traffic all week.
What It Was Worth
Conventions are expensive and exhausting, and the honest reason to take four booths is that equipment does not sell from a photograph. A dentist deciding between chairs wants to sit in both. A dentist deciding on an endo motor wants to hold it.
Five days gave several hundred of them the chance to do exactly that, and gave us five days of questions that no product sheet would have surfaced.
Everything that was on the booth is on the showroom floor at 610 C. Raymundo Avenue, Maybunga, Pasig City. The convention pricing ended with the convention. The chairs, the endodontic bench and the microscope are still here.
From Our Facebook Page
Written from our posts of May 11 to 18, 2026. The announcement and the four reels:
Facebook reelWatch the original with soundFacebook reelWatch the original with soundFacebook reelWatch the original with soundFacebook reelWatch the original with sound