Gst, oh no! where will the Fowler/Harmond road show go next?
>``I don't think the industry is going away. . . . People still need to get together and they will.''
>Mercury News
During the economy's boom times, technology conferences were not only a place where companies could show off their wares. They were social extravaganzas -- places to see and be seen, collect swag, rub elbows with the latest Internet luminaries, and above all, to schmooze.
But things, of course, have changed.
Attendance has flagged at tech conferences. Some have been canceled outright, and those who do attend are far more cost-conscious and serious about getting down to business.
``There's a natural fallout in attendance with the economy taking a turn right now,'' said Dyan Armstrong, senior marketing communications manager for Clarent, a Redwood City-based company that makes Internet telephony products. ``It's kind of a healthy thing. It's quite expensive, as well, to attend all those trade shows.''
Here in Silicon Valley, global high-tech's ground zero, the convention changes have really hit home. After all, the San Francisco Bay Area is also where most dot-com start-ups are (or were) based, along with some of the nation's biggest venture capital firms.
``This year, the economy is retrenching and people are really serious about going into conferences because they have limited dollars to spend, and there's got to be good value to it,'' said Alissa Neil, who directs public relations for the Industry Standard, which sponsors several tech conferences a year.
Witness last week's sparsely attended M2001 wireless commerce convention at the San Jose McEnery Convention Center.
``This is a disaster,'' said Christophe Garnier, of the company Mobileway, a conference exhibitor. ``There is just nobody here. A lot of the companies didn't even come. There's no more money around, not even for booths.''
Garnier and other exhibitors said larger tech conferences are still packed and buzzing, but companies just don't have enough money to send people to smaller ones like M2001.
Christina Carrier, who does marketing for the Convention Center, said no one has canceled at her venue, but Doug Hamilton, general manager of the smaller Silicon Valley Convention Center, admits his business has been hit hard.
``We've seen a fair number of cancellations . . . all with the promise of coming back as soon as it gets better. We're part of the trickle-down effect, that's the best way to put it.''
To deal with the downturn, Hamilton said he's ``searching for a different kind of clientele . . . to look to businesses that aren't so tied to high tech.''
He's not the only one to adopt that strategy. Active Communications International, a Chicago-based company that organizes more than 15 tech conferences a year, is ``moving away from anything that has to do with e-commerce, or anything that has to do with dot-coms,'' according to spokeswoman Julie Haines.
Companies are willing to pay cancellation fees of $50,000 or higher rather than lose significantly more on a convention, according to Linda Mansouria, a San Francisco meeting planner.
The trend extends beyond the Bay Area as well. Last November, what was to be the first-ever ``World Internet Forum,'' in London was abruptly canceled because of lack of interest. More than 100 speakers had been scheduled, but fewer than 100 people had signed up to actually attend. Sunnyvale's Network Appliance was one of the sponsors.
Conference regulars say the wine that once flowed freely at the conventions and launch parties of yesteryear has slowed to a trickle, and the sobriety has spread to conference-goers' mood, too.
Rachel Konrad, a reporter for the tech news Web site CNET, likened February's annual Stanford University Graduate School of Business Conference on Entrepreneurship to a funeral.
The event -- where budding entrepreneurs pitch ideas to venture capitalists -- has, until now, been ``a big group hug,'' she said. But this year, business students asked VCs about financing, and ``one just said straight out, `The doors on Sand Hill Road are bolted shut.' And a depression just spread across the room.''
Despite the wane in the conference business, Sabrina Richie, assistant director of the Northern California chapter of Meeting Professionals International, said the show will inevitably go on.
``I don't think the industry is going away. . . . People still need to get together and they will.'' |
