The trouble with COMDEX Canada

First published July 16, 1998

An odd scent wafted through the halls of the convention centre. It wasn't the sweet smell of success. It was the whiff of decay at COMDEATH Canada.

The three-day computer show and conference, held last week in the Metro Toronto Convention Centre (MTCC), is still the largest in Canada, but it's clearly in trouble. After years of impressive growth, COMDEX Canada is in decline.

If you went to the trade show floor hoping to see all the latest products from big names in the computer industry such as Compaq, Apple, Hewlett-Packard, IBM and Lotus, you were disappointed. Not one of these key players rented a booth this year, although IBM did show a few ThinkPad notebooks in a corner of Intel's exhibit.

The show is clearly smaller. Two years ago, the COMDEX Canada show guide boasted of more than 500 exhibitors. This year it claims "more than 350," although a COMDEX spokesperson said the final tally probably topped 400. A large area of the South Hall was cordoned off, potential exhibit space that wasn't sold.

What's gone wrong? Why are exhibitors deserting COMDEX? What does this mean for the future of the trade show?

According to Lorna Rosenstein, general manager of Lotus Canada, the company decided to pull out of COMDEX this year independently of parent company IBM, which arrived at the same judgment. Rosenstein points out the large costs of mounting a COMDEX exhibit, from renting sufficient booth space to make an impact, to staffing the exhibit with qualified personnel over the three days of the show.

Rosenstein also noticed a change in the makeup of attendees. Fewer represent the lucrative corporate buying sector. More appear to be students or home computer users who aren't in the market for groupware such as Lotus Notes or Internet server software such as Lotus Domino. And these attendees are better served by shows such as ComputerFest, which are aimed at their interests.

Lotus now prefers to exhibit at smaller, more specialized trade shows. Yet even though Lotus wasn't on the COMDEX show floor, it was nearby, hosting a dinner reception across the street to launch the Millennium Edition of Lotus SmartSuite.

In this way Lotus can take advantage of the people in town for COMDEX, yet invite only those it wishes to its reception. Others are also adopting this cost-effective approach. Agfa announced a new parallel port scanner and digital camera at a reception the night before COMDEX opened, while it did not exhibit at the show. Even Microsoft Canada, one of the staunchest COMDEX Canada supporters, held its swank Galileo awards dinner off-site, at the Royal Ontario Museum.

When you tally all the activities in hotel hospitality suites and restaurant private dining rooms, quite a lot of computer-related events, and many of the most interesting ones, took place during COMDEX but outside of it.

COMDEX Canada is really two shows. The official COMDEX features a dwindling number of exhibitors, dominated by smaller companies, and is attended by students and the small business crowd. The unofficial COMDEX has the splashy events from big players in the industry, attended by a coterie of a few hundred influencers who make it on the invitation lists.

Will even more exhibitors pull out of COMDEX next year? Will this depress attendance? What's show-owner ZD COMDEX & Forums doing to staunch the show's decline?

It's on a mission to eliminate the students. You had to be at least 21 years to attend the show. A 19-year-old can drink alcohol in Ontario, but couldn't experience the brew of COMDEX.

ZD COMDEX needs to do much more to bring back the corporate buyers that are the show's lifeblood. Now there's a lot of product information available on the Internet, so COMDEX needs to offer more. In particular, ZD COMDEX must invest to improve the show's conferences.

ZD COMDEX charges a hefty $495 to those who attend the conferences, yet it doesn't pay the speakers. It is any surprise that most presenters are marketing types who derive their compensation by pitching their wares? ZD COMDEX says conference pre-registrations were higher this year (final figures weren't available), but I found many sessions sparsely attended.

COMDEX keynoters are selected based upon the size of their company's exhibit and not on the merits of their message. The opening keynote by Microsoft executive vice-president Bob Herbold was particularly unfulfilling, a loosely strung together collection of pitches for Microsoft products.

When COMDEX's predecessor burst upon the Canadian scene in 1992, it quickly dispatched the Canadian Computer show, an ossified trade show nearly 25 years old. Today, it's COMDEX that's showing its age in an era when people are more familiar with computers and can easily get information from other sources.

ZD COMDEX, that rapping you hear isn't the sound of people knocking on the door clamouring to get into COMDEX Canada. Open the door and you'll see they're nailing your show's coffin. CW