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Comdex 2003: Glitz takes a back seat to court serious buyers

By Kim Peterson
Seattle Times technology reporter

	AP Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates is to give the keynote address at Comdex tonight. The Las Vegas event runs through Thursday.
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An estimated 211,000 people attended the show that year, the most ever for the annual, highly anticipated event. Comdex, which started in 1979 as the Computer Dealer Exposition, had become a spectacle, a thrilling mishmash of Las Vegas kitsch, over-the-top parties and attention-getting gimmicks.

This year, against a backdrop that hints of a tech industry back on the upswing, Comdex is under new management and is expected to be completely different. Organizers have reined in the show, saying it should be less glitzy and more serious.

"Comdex, really frankly, had to change along with the times," said Eric Faurot, the show's general manager. "What we need to do is really focus the event, get back to basics and really put the right buyers and sellers together."

Comdex begins tonight with a keynote speech by Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates and runs through Thursday. Other speakers include Sun Microsystems Chief Executive Scott McNealy and John Zeglis, the chief executive of AT&T Wireless.

It's a Comdex world When: Tonight through Thursday. Where: The Las Vegas Convention Center. Why: It's an annual gathering (beginning in 1979) of the technology industry, featuring Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates and other corporate leaders. How many: About 50,000 attendees, including about 1,000 journalists. So what: Speeches are given, networking is rampant and deals are made. When you mix technology buyers and sellers in Las Vegas, anything can happen.

Only about 50,000 attendees are expected — a quarter the size of the peak — and about 500 companies will exhibit in booths on one floor of the Las Vegas Convention Center, which in the past had been filled to near-capacity. The number of reporters covering the event has dwindled from 1,800 to about 1,000, mainly because the show no longer issues press passes to newsletter writers.

Also gone are the massage-chair vendors and the car-stereo companies. Comdex's organizers wanted attendees to be industry insiders who influence corporate technology buying. As a result, the show refunded $45,000 worth of reservation deposits to companies that didn't fit that profile.

Those who were allowed to exhibit got a price break. The least-expensive floor space this year costs $50 a square foot — about $10 less than in previous years.

As Comdex tightens its belt, the other major technology event, the Consumer Electronics Show, appears on track to grow. CES takes place every January in Las Vegas, and its attendance has grown from 97,000 in 1999 to 118,000 this year.

EDS, a systems management and services giant in Plano, Texas, isn't exhibiting at Comdex this year — perhaps it's still paying for that airport hangar party — but Dell will have a booth for the first time since 1997, Faurot said. Canon used to promote its digital cameras on the show floor, but this time representatives from its information-technology division will discuss its wireless business.

Comdex previously did not charge an entry fee. Now, attendees who don't meet the show's qualifications must pay $50 to get in. That has significantly cut the "certain amount of people coming to the event looking for T-shirts," Faurot said.

Many of those people were locals. This year, only 6 percent of attendees are coming from the Las Vegas area, down from 23 percent in past years.

Now with private ownership

Comdex was previously run by Key3Media, a publicly traded company that filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection early this year. The company emerged from reorganization as the newly named, privately held MediaLive International, and is 90 percent owned by private equity fund company Thomas Weisel Capital Partners.

MediaLive was able to make more substantial changes to Comdex as a privately held company, Faurot said. This year's show is the first step in a rebuilding process, he added.

"We're very bullish, and so is Thomas Weisel, that this market is going to come back," he said.

Recent reports of an improved personal-computer market could help boost Comdex's attendance. About 42.5 million PCs shipped worldwide in the third quarter, a 14.1 percent increase from the same period last year, according to Gartner, the tech-research company.

The growth is largely attributed to consumer buyers, who are learning more about wireless computing and are attracted by falling prices and performance improvements, Gartner said. The results led analysts to increase projections for fourth-quarter PC shipments.

The semiconductor industry also reported a solid third quarter, with worldwide chip sales up 17.5 percent over third quarter 2002. Analysts say the corporate world is poised for a massive hardware "refresh," and technology spending could pick up next year as a result.

Need for results

But an improved technology industry does not necessarily mean an invigorated Comdex. Computerworld recently polled several dozen technology professionals about Comdex, and found that many of them still perceive the show as being "too big, too glitzy and too out of touch" with the corporate technology needs, according to the magazine.

Bellevue-based UltraBac Software nearly canceled its trip this year because the show doesn't produce the kind of results that the company gets from other trade shows.

"Part of it was because of the lack of focus on our market, and the fact that the organization sponsoring it went bankrupt," said Morgan Edwards, chief executive of the company, which specializes in disaster recovery for Windows-based servers and desktops. "We weren't sure there was even going to be a conference."

But canceling meant losing the security deposit it had paid, so UltraBac will attend but lease a smaller booth space, Edwards said. The company will send only three people, and they will likely promote a new version of its recovery software.

"This is kind of a tester to see if Comdex is going to rebound," he said.

Saflink, a Bellevue biometrics company, is planning to have a large booth where people can pull a slot machine for a shot at winning a new car. The company took the same approach last year and got thousands of leads, said Chief Executive Glenn Argenbright.

Comdex is one of Saflink's best networking events, he said, and this year's changes could make the experience even better.

"The key is the Fortune 100 companies are there," Argenbright said. "They send people that can actually make some decisions, and those are the people we want to talk to."

Kim Peterson: 206-464-2360 or kpeterson@seattletimes.com

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