COMDEX resurrection an indefinite 'maybe'

Deseret News (Salt Lake City), Jul 6, 2004 by David L. Politis

The headline hit like a fist to the gut: "COMDEX Las Vegas 2004 Postponed."

Truthfully, it should have read, "COMDEX is dead." That's not how I felt last November, however.

In retrospect, it seems like COMDEX has been around forever, and in the tech world, it basically has.

First held in Las Vegas in the fall of 1979 as the Computer Dealer Exposition with some 4,000 geeks in attendance, COMDEX had steadily grown to hit a high of more than 200,000 attendees in 1999. Me -- I've been COMDEXing every year since 1986 (except for the year I was knocked out of commission by a ruptured Achilles tendon, but that's another story).

Primarily in attendance to help various clients help publicize, market or sell their tech wares, I've found COMDEX to be very, very good to me over the years. Nevertheless, during my annual sojourns to COMDEX I've stayed in the worst dive hotels and the best resort casinos; I've met some of the weirdest and flakiest people as well as some of the best; and I've had some pretty amazing experiences along with some experiences I'd just as soon forget.

As mentioned above, 1999 was the top year for attendance at COMDEX, and getting around Vegas that third week in November was an absolute nightmare (even if you were lucky/smart enough to have a rental car).

COMDEX 2000 saw a definite scaling back to somewhere between 150,000 and 160,000 attendees, but it was still a rocking show.

Mid-November 2001, however, I remember sitting in the COMDEX press tent on Monday morning glued to the television watching sketchy reports come in on CNN about the unexplained crash of a jet airliner in New York City.

Speculation ran pretty high that day as to the cause of the crash, both on air and in the press room, particularly as it occurred nearly two months to the day after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. If memory serves me right, however, the cause turned out to be a simple mechanical failure. Even so, it cast a pall over the tech proceedings in Sin City that year. And as we know now, the attendance slide was just beginning.

Long-time readers of this column realize that I'm a "glass half- full" kind of guy, a definite optimist. So naturally, that's how I wrote about COMDEX Fall 2003.

Sure attendance was down, the main hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center wasn't even full with exhibitors, and the number of journalists and analysts in Vegas had dropped precipitously. But I figured, "It'll be back." It's just the backwash from the triple whammy of the DotCom implosion, the 9/11/01 terrorist attacks/ attendant war on terrorism and the worst recession in more than 40 years.

Heck, we even had one client meet with more than 80 journalists and analysts one evening at a COMDEX media reception last year. I guess I should have listened to the naysayers.

Officially, COMDEX Fall is only postponed -- call it a hiatus until November 2005.

After COMDEX's former owner Key3Media Group went bankrupt, investment bank Thomas Weisel Partners took over its assets and formed Media Live International in June 2003 as a private company.

According to the folks at Media Live, the problem with COMDEX is that the show had evolved to try to become all things to all people instead of maintaining its focus on selling the latest tech gadgets, gizmos and offerings to businesses and organizations.

But when it tried to go up against the strong competition provided by the annual Consumer Electronics Show held in Las Vegas each January, a show with more glitz and glitter, COMDEX began to fade.

So there you have it -- another classic mistake from another technology company.

Rather than continuing to focus on what had made it great in the first place -- technology offerings sold by dealers, resellers and integrators to businesses -- COMDEX tried to become the technology show for everyone.

In other words, it lost its focus. And what happens when technology companies lose their focus class? Right! They fail!

Personally, I hope the people at Media Live are successful in bringing back COMDEX Fall as an ongoing, resurrected event, one focused on the business side of technology.

But if you were to ask me to bet money on it, I'd pass, as I think it's a sucker's bet.

In the meantime, for the first time in nearly 20 years, I've got an open dance slot the third week of November. Any ideas of what I might do instead?

David Politis leads Politis Communications, a strategic communications agency that helps maximize corporate value for high- tech and life science companies. E-mail: dpolitis@politis.com.