September Cover 


Cabling Infrastructure

CommScope

Hitachi Cable

HyperlineSystems

Panduit

Cable closures

Fiber Instrument Sales

Cabling Raceways

ADC Telecommunications

Pre-terminated cabling

Corning Cable Systems

HellermannTyton

WAN Services

Masergy Communications

Media conversion

Transition Networks

Network Security

Juniper Networks

Power over Ethernet

Transition Networks

Power Management

Eaton/Powerware Pulizzi

Remote Monitoring

Network Technologies

Sensaphone

Switching

Transition Networks

Voice over IP

Microsoft

TC Communications

VoIP Testing/Analysis

GL Communications

Wireless

Canon Broadcast

Oberon

OFS

Features

November 2005

EDITOR'S NOTE

Is small better?

Ken Anderberg

Thirteen years ago, a small, regional trade show was started in Atlanta, a city fresh off winning its bid for the 1996 Olympics. There was an international fervor in the business community–leading up to the Olympic decision in 1992 and for several years after the sporting event. Atlanta suddenly had become an international city–and the time seemed right to start a trade show focused on conducting global business.

The excitement at that early event was palpable. The buzz about international business at the time in Atlanta, for example, spurred the formation of a number of related business groups, several publications and a second trade show. Newly minted international business experts roamed this landscape.

Today’s technology landscape seems somewhat similar. In recent years, trade shows have cropped up to focus on narrow niches of the technology market, such as security, wireless and voice over IP. Small, almost regional in nature, they have taken a narrow segment of the market and put a national spotlight on their subject matter.

These events, much like that Atlanta international conference, also have a certain buzz to them. Attendees may number only a few hundred, with maybe 50 exhibitors, but the excitement is noticeable. As they mushroom in numbers, however, those that run enterprise IT departments are faced with a dilemma.

With the shrinking IT budgets and staff of recent years, and the need to spend any new monies on improving data and voice networks through new products, these attendees are faced with the decision on which of these many, niche shows to devote budget. In the past, conferences like Networld+Interop and ComNet provided a smorgasbord of products, vendors, technologies, educational sessions and networking. One or two of these a year, with multiple staff members attending, seemed to be the easiest path to take.

As technologies evolved, however, IT staff found a need for more detailed information that might not have been available at these more horizontal events. So ComNet disappeared due to a lack of attendees and exhibitors (it is making a comeback Nov. 26 in New York City), and Networld+Interop (now called just Interop) scaled back from two annual shows to one, far smaller event (a second Interop will be held in December in New York City.) Shows like VoiceCon and InfoSec took on heightened appeal.

Is this new small, almost regional show template sustainable? As the number of security-related companies shrinks through acquisition and attrition, for example, will there be enough vendors remaining to support the nearly dozen events devoted to the topic? Will attendees tire of going to a lot of single-topic conferences in favor of the old Interop model?

That international show in Atlanta, by the way, lasted seven years. The “international” energy simply dissipated after the Olympics. Attendance dwindled. Interest waned. Might that be the fate of some of today’s single-topic trade shows? Let us know what you think.


kanderberg@comnews.com