Next generation COMDEX--lean, mean and focused? An exclusive interview with MediaLive's Michael Millikin.

Mark: Once upon a time, there was this show called COMDEX that had been going oil for years. It was the successor to the National Computer Conference. Over time, it grew to over 200,000 plus attendees at any given show. But times have changed. Business has grown harder, the economy has become more challenged, and you recently emerged from Chapter 11 with a new company with a strong funding partner. However, COMDEX may not end up the same. What sort of changes do you plan from the COMDEX that we knew to the COMDEX that is upcoming?

Michael: COMDEX is interesting in that from the beginning--unlike many of the other events that we run that are content based--it grew up from a rapidly growing market. Over the 20-plus years of its existence, it's morphed into a show that has a very strong component of B2B IT buyers. So, really it has become--not through any deliberate planning on our part--the IT industry event where issues are talked about, discussed and moved forward. The problem we had, of course, was that while there was that nature of COMDEX, in its kernel externally, it was still a manifestation of whatever was happening in the market.

And, as we all know, the market imploded in 2000. It began a long process of deflation and with that came down the marketing budgets that had fueled much of the activity at the shows and the million two plus square feet of the circus-like atmosphere that many people would ascribe to COMDEX.

What we've done is step back and recognize that we are the IT industry event out there. There is no other event of our scope currently serving the broad IT market in North America. And an industry as large and complex as IT needs an industry event. Every industry has one, whether it's NAB, EDS, the Bio show for Biotech--there is always a large event for a given industry.

Usually they're driven by an association. As it happens, there is no association at this point in the IT industry. And so we have taken it upon ourselves the role of acting like an association even though we are not formally one. It means that we focus much more precisely on the business needs, technology needs and the educational needs of our stakeholders--the B2B buyers and the vendors.

To that end we're building COMDEX Fall around seven technology themes that are near and dear to the IT buyers' hearts right now. They're the issues that represent some of the most pressing areas of concern. They're the areas where there's going to be the most build-out over the next five to ten years. On-demand computing is a very good example of that. We're reflecting the conference program thematically so that the themes also drive the exhibition floor in that we am not allowing in the types of exhibitors that have come in the past--such as providers of magnetic jewelry, or gel insoles for shoes--some of the outliers on the COMDEX fringe. We've actually already refunded money and pushed them off the floor this year. They don't really have a place in the COMDEX going forward.

We're also taking each of the themes and building out on the event floor a demonstration area. It's going to be a demonstration of interoperability of new capability. It's not a traditional exhibit-based approach. It's something very similar to what people have seen over the years at Interop, where we do interoperability areas around emerging technologies or issues like that. Those are very key differences. There's a specific focus to COMDEX that's driven by the seven themes for this year. We're tightly following what happened with the needs of the IT buyers and building everything accordingly. So COMDEX will be smaller, much more focused, and we will also continue to do, in conjunction with COMDEX, events such as the one that we are doing today--the COMDEX Innovation Forum. It has no exhibition component.

Mark: Many are asking if there's a place for a national show in this field and if the shill is toward smaller, more tightly focused conferences. Has this trend impacted your thinking?

Michael: It has, and our conclusion is that you really need both for a given industry. A given industry needs an industry event. At this point, it's COMDEX. And whether or not we do our job it will remain COMDEX or it won't be COMDEX. I think that the regional events are terrific and you'll see more regional activity from us than you've seen in the past. You'll see more vertical market activity from us than you've seen in the past.

But take, for example, the emergence of autonomic computing, which is a fairly fundamental shift. If you look at the way a vendor such as Hewlett-Packard is addressing it, with its depth of enterprise, and just look at one aspect of that--which is their utility data center, there are multiple areas of technology that go into creating the overall package. There's storage virtualization, there's software virtualization, there's management virtualization. If you divide all of those up and take them to the individual vertical shows, you don't have the discussion of the overall benefit.

The second aspect of it is this: As an industry, you need to have enough drawing power in all event to have the leading CEOs come to have the public policy people come. We've made a major outreach to the Washington side of the house--that you haven't seen al COMDEX in the past. That started last Fall and we'll continue on with this in future COMDEX conventions. The policy discussion is an important aspect of a maturing industry. There's still tons of innovation. But we are maturing with the dynamics of the marketplace and the dynamics of buying are changing and we need to adopt accordingly. But to the point of your question, there's a need for both.

Mark: What style of education are you going to be providing at the conference? Will it be consistent panel-type discussions, keynote speeches, that sort of thing?

Michael: We will have panel-type discussions, we will have keynote speeches, we will have workshops and tutorials by independent experts. We will have poster sessions on the floor. It depends on what's being described--the state of the technology. We will draw from all possible formats including some emerging online approaches and attempts and we'll keep playing with the technology as it moves ahead.

Mark: Now, innovation was something that you pointed out. It puts me in mind of the person that was in charge of the U.S. Patent Office in the 19th century and he expected no more business because he felt that everything that could be invented already has been. He was proven a little bit wrong. How does that sense of innovation apply to conference show business? You've identified that you cannot he what you were in order to be successful. What I am hearing is that the efforts that you are going le make to rise from the ashes, if you will, is to sharpen some of the technology foci. Is that what is going to happen to tradeshows business-wide?

Michael: I think that, in general, yes. Face to face events have several aspects to them. One aspect is definitely solid education. What are the solutions that I need? Who are the vendors that I need to talk to? How do I advance my career?

The other aspect is show business and marketing. And in the dot-com era when venture capitalists threw hundreds of millions of dollars in start-up companies, they had these incredibly large marketing budgets. And an unfortunate side effect was enormous displays at trade shows--that sort of thing. Which was great iii the time but, ultimately, it was n disservice to the progress of the industry as a whole.

So I think that, ultimately. we're all serving the same group. We're serving the IT buyers and we're selling the vendors at these events. And what serves the market right now is a much more serious approach. It's much more substance based. And we like to have fun, like to kick back. But it's for people to take their time. Forget about the money. Just taking the time to participate in an event requires that there be some substantive educational value. If I'm going to take the time as an IT professional to come to an event, I must know something more upon leaving than when I got there or else my time's been wasted.

Mark: And that ties into the next question. What the vendors are going to want to know is: How are yon going to drive attendance in a budget con strained economy?

Michael: Well, the way you are going to drive attendance, in our beliefs, is that you make sure that your educational program is the right one. If the educational program is the right one, attendees come because it meets their needs. Again, that's why its important to have the themes reflected net just in the paid-for conference but in the keynotes, on the demonstration areas en the floor, and the rest.

We just had a presentation from a design and engineering professor at MIT, in one of our innovation forums here. And one of the things that he pointed out was the need to participate. There's a need to get your bands on something to see how it works in conjunction with other things. That's why our focus is on innovation centers on the floor. That's why, for example, when we go to a vendor such as HP, we're not going to say 'bring the whole boat.' We'll walk in and with them describe how we're focusing the show on seven themes and work with them to make sure that their efforts at the show match our theme programming and their particular business goals. And if it doesn't work for them in a particular cycle, then they shouldn't come to the show.

We've actually gone through that process with Sony. Sony, for example, was for a long time a large exhibitor at COMDEX. Sony has made a business decision to focus on the consumer side and not really push their business products. We believe that by focusing very clearly on the needs of the IT buying community and building the program around that, it will work vein well together as an ecosystem for the industry.

Mark: Actually, it pulls into who the Computer Technology Review publication is for. We believe that the integrator, OEM and VAR are offering one thing--and one thing only--to their end-user customers. And that is their technology expertise. And anything that will add to that particular store of knowledge makes them more competitive and ultimately more profitable. One last question: What are your actual expectations in terms of loot traffic for COMDEX this year?

Michael: We are in the process of going through that. And again, we're doing different things. We're charging for access to the exhibit floor--which we haven't done in the past. We are making sure that we filter out, to the best of our capability, local vendors that are there to try to sell. Probably the number we will end up working with is around 80,000. Which, again, is smaller but we're focused more on relevance than size.

Michael D. Millikin is senior vice president of MediaLive International (formerly Key3Media). He holds general management responsibility for the COMDEX and N + I trade shows and conferences.

RELATED ARTICLE: Comdex themes.

Wireless and Mobility: The wireless and mobility theme explores all of the important technologies, applications and issues in wireless networking today, from wireless LANs and wireless security to mobile applications and devices, personal area networks to development tools.

The Digital Enterprise: A revolution is underway in business communications: Maturing technologies are giving organizations new ability to share information internally, with customers and with business partners. This theme investigates the digitization of value in an enterprise, and explores the future of communications in areas such as knowledge management, enterprise application and collaboration.

Web Services: The Web services theme takes an exacting look at using Web services to foster application integration, to be the foundation for new types of services and to add to an organization's bottom line, with a focus on the costs and benefits of implementing underlying technologies such as ebXML, .NET, J2EE, UDDI and WSDL.

Windows and .NET: This topic area provides a realistic, unbiased examination of Microsoft operating systems and applications, including insight on the company's evolving strategic .NET framework and solutions.

Open Source: The Open Source movement has proved it will play an enduring role in enterprise computing. Topics in this conference will cover the range of technical issues for IT professionals and developers as well as business issues for the strategic planners and decision makers.

On Demand Computing: The notion of self-managing, self-healing systems providing computing power as a utility may sound like vapor--but every major vendor is taking steps to developing it and delivering it today. This theme explores the emergence of this incredibly strategic technology framework--on-demand and autonomic computing--and looks at the steps from vision to reality.

Security: Secure networked computing has never been more important. But user mobility, increasingly collaborative Web services, and a changing regulatory environment make it more difficult than ever to achieve. This topic area examines emerging security strategies and technologies, and presents current best practices for improving security.

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