Fall Comdex canceled due to shortage of key exhibitors

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June 23, 2004 (Computerworld) -- The huge annual fall Comdex IT trade show, which had been set to open Nov. 14 in Las Vegas, has been postponed by its promoters because of a lack of support from major exhibitors.
The next Comdex show in the U.S. is scheduled for Nov. 13-17, 2005, at the Las Vegas Convention Center.
In an announcement today, Robert W. Priest-Heck, president and CEO of MediaLive International Inc., which runs the show, said that "while we could still run a profitable Comdex this year, it does not benefit the industry to do so without broader support of the leading technology companies."
The San Francisco-based company said it will postpone the show indefinitely so that it can work to "reshape the event with the cooperation of information technology industry leaders." MediaLive has established a Comdex Advisory Board that includes representatives from major IT companies to help determine how the show can best meet the future needs of the industry.
"In order to give the advisory board the time and opportunity necessary to partake in the redesign of Comdex, we thought it best to postpone this year's show," Priest-Heck said.
Last November's Comdex was the first under MediaLive International, which took over the show from its former promoters, Key3Media, which had filed for bankruptcy. At that time, Eric Faurot, vice president and general manager of the show, said the first MediaLive-run Comdex was smaller than previous shows and was still working to bring in more major vendors to reposition the event as a focused, business-to-business IT show (see story). Faurot called it "essentially a launch show for us" and said that future events would cater even more to enterprise IT companies.

About 40,000 visitors attended last year's show, down from some 200,000 in its heyday during the 1990s.
In an interview after the show's cancellation was announced, Faurot said that one of the keys to again making Comdex a must-see event is to find ways to get the major IT vendors back on the show floor so products and technologies can be compared more fully. Some major vendors, including IBM and Linux vendors Red Hat Inc. and SUSE Linux AG, which is now part of Novell Inc., weren't on the show floor last year.
Adding insult to injury for MediaLive, executives from IBM and other companies actually come to Las Vegas for the show but met privately with customers in hotel suites, rather than paying for booth space at the show itself.
"We're talking with everybody, and that's exactly what the [Comdex Advisory] Board is going to address," Faurot said. "The reality is it takes time to get trust back."
He refused to

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