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Many of you attended our Hotsos Symposium in Dallas earlier this month. You might be interested in an article (below) that was published in the Dallas Morning News about a week ago.
Thanks, Jared, for giving me the okay to pass this on to the list…
Cary Millsap
Page at: http://www.dallasnews.com/business/columnists/agoldstein/stories/021903dnbustechcol.5ccdb.html ======================================================================
Trading size for substance
Attendees now prefer smaller tech shows over mega-conferences
02/19/2003
TECHNOLOGY
With technology spending way down and no recovery in sight, this might not seem like the best time to debut a software-related trade show.
But Southlake-based Hotsos Enterprises Ltd. launched a three-day event last week that attracted about 270 people from around the world, enough of a success to begin planning for a second annual conference.
That kind of attendance might represent a rounding error for many of the technology industry's mega-conferences such as Comdex, which at its peak two years ago attracted more than 200,000 people.
But when it comes to trade shows lately, smaller, more focused events are better.
"If I go to a smaller conference, my expectation is it'll have more substance and less marketing," said James R. Foley, a database administrator for aerospace giant Boeing Co. in Seattle, who was attending the Hotsos conference at a Dallas-area hotel.
Hotsos (pronounced "hot sauce") helps corporate customers run their Oracle-based database systems more efficiently.
"I don't go to the larger shows anymore," said another attendee, Jim Boles, a database administrator from NCS Pearson Inc. in Eagan, Minn. "They're not specialized enough."
The big time
A few years ago, anyone in search of the next big thing out of the tech industry had little choice but to brave the throngs at huge trade shows. Attendees regularly groused about getting shoved and jostled in overcrowded convention halls, hotel ballrooms and at late-night parties. They would wait impatiently through long lines for restaurants and taxicabs.
The crowds have never really bothered me. I've always liked tapping the energy of the big shows, where industry executives premiere their strategies in keynote addresses -- or at least sling amusing verbal arrows at one another.
Big shows are valuable for their critical mass of expertise. I once met a valued source in an airport bus leaving the convention center in Manhattan. A conversation that I overheard on a packed flight out of Las Vegas led to a decent news story.
These days, though, many big conferences have a lot more breathing room.
Attendance at Comdex in Las Vegas in November fell by nearly half from its zenith in 2000. The show's organizer filed for bankruptcy protection this month.
Other shows are struggling, too. Journalists have been joking that they've outnumbered industry attendees at some of the major trade shows -- and it hasn't seemed like much of an exaggeration.
Blame the weak economy and a lot of corporate skepticism about whether technology investments are worth all the trouble and expense.
Businesses that once sent teams of staffers to the mega-shows to learn about hot Internet strategies have sharply curtailed spending for travel as well as for technology. Tech companies that used to feel obligated to exhibit at all the venues have slashed their marketing plans -- or gone out of business.
Tighter focus
Those who still get to travel to conferences are being told to choose more carefully, said Gary Goodman, co-founder and manager of Hotsos.
"People might say, 'I can only do one show this year,' " he said. "So they can go to a big show and get a trickle of information about a lot of things, or come here and drink from a fire hose."
Hotsos' message is tailored for tough times. Its conference focused on how database administrators can improve performance by reducing the demand on existing equipment, rather than making additional purchases.
One of the speakers I heard exhorted customers to set priorities in how they tweak systems -- making improvements only where they'll have the greatest impact. Sensible stuff.
Some large expositions are still thriving, but they're more focused than the broad and diffuse Comdex. The Consumer Electronics Show is now the biggest trade show in North America; the event last month in Las Vegas hosted more than 100,000 attendees. The annual Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association show remains indispensable for people in the wireless industry.
"People have a no-nonsense attitude about conferences, a back-to-basics approach," said Amnon Aliphas of Global Technology Conferences Inc. in Boston, which is organizing a technical event in Dallas focused on applications for digital signal processing chips.
"It's nice for people to have a good time. But they need to ask what good it will do for their company.”
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- Re: Newspaper story about conferences, Hotsos Symposium Cary Millsap
- Re: Newspaper story about conferences, Hotsos Symposium John Sheraton
