Twenty years ago, in the dawn of the PC era, Comdex must have been really something. In those days there were no behemoths of the industry dominating their market space. Comdex -- the Computer Dealers Exposition -- was the place to go to make alliances, prospect for partners and renew friendships.
I never attended a vintage Comdex. In fact, the show just winding up was my first one. And it made me wonder if Comdex still has a role to play in today's more evolved IT environment.
Over the last two decades, IT jobs have become more specialised and compartmentalised. As they've become so, other trade shows have sprung up to bring like-minded professionals together. It's far more important for a networking professional to attend NetWorld+Interop or a Web developer to attend Internet World than it is for either to attend Comdex.
Should you continue to attend or exhibit? Consider what you get out of the show. Here's my take on this one.
I did actually attend a keynote speech -- specifically, the opening keynote by Bill Gates. Microsoft's chief of thinkology has the keynote gig down to a science: a topical joke to start off, a humorous short video, followed by a sales pitch for the products in his company's pipeline.
For just a moment, I thought Gates might break out of the mould for something more substantive. In his opening remarks, I heard something like a State of the Union speech for IT. It was just a few remarks in passing, unfortunately. Too bad -- if anyone has the cachet and imprimatur to pull off such a talk, it would be Bill Gates. I'd love to hear his objective assessment of where technology is heading. But I'm not sure he's able to be impartial about that topic even to himself -- he seems far too wrapped up in what's good for Microsoft.
The show floor provided a diversion that was only slightly more engaging. Exhibitors are set up in both the Las Vegas Convention Center and the Sands Convention Center. In past years, they overflowed into the Hilton too -- perhaps there were fewer exhibitors this year. The Sands was full of smaller vendors, many selling components. The LVCC offered more variety on a wider scale, from whizzy new MP3 players to Best of Comdex enterprise-class winners in SAN management and data mining.
While I enjoyed seeing new products, I could have gotten almost as much from trade media coverage of the show. For me, the main benefit of attending was meeting with colleagues based in other locations to discuss policy and practices, something we could do almost as well via conference call.
While I question the need for Comdex, I don't expect it to wither away in the immediate future. Comdex is still the annual place to see and be seen, and enough vendors feel they have to be there that it remains profitable.
