Thursday, November 21, 2002

Introduction

This is it, the 2002 Las Vegas Comdex is finished.

What should we keep in memory about this Comdex are you asking? As amatter of fact, many things.

First of all, the 2002 Las Vegas Comdex has been deceiving on many aspects. Many of the attendees that are not first comers to this event have told me that they would not come back because of the way that this event is evolving.

Since the most successful Condex held some years ago where there were over 200,000 visitors, all the following Comdex were less and less successful and this year Comdex was only occupying the quart of the space of the last year Comdex. At least, this is what has been reported to me.

Given the fact that there are less and less exhibitors, the Comdex is becoming less and less attractive especially when considering the cost of the life in Las Vegas city which is prohibitive and the interest to go to such an event not able to fulfil its promises is easily questionned by the attendees.

Las Vegas

Las Vegas is with no doubt an extraordinaryand wonderful city. Everything is out of standards here.

Some of the hotels are so huge that they have embeded shoping centers where we can find some of the greatest names like Versace, Gucci, Yves-St-Laurent, etc, ect.

The city is incredibly clean and the authorities are making sure that it stays this way all the time.

Las Vegas is an amazing city for sure and must absolutely be visited at least one time in everyone's life.

However, everything is not only rose and blue in this city.

If the criminality seems to be unexisting here, Las Vegas is neveretheless a tourist trap because it is obvious here that what they want is your money and that they'll get it by all means.

The cost of the hotel rooms is absolutely astronomical. Some restaurants are affordable but many others are just out of reach for most of the peoples.

However, what is the most annoying if when comes the time to get the necessities of all day life. Everything is simply out of price and tagged with abusive prices. My own estimations is that the pricing here are inflated between 150% to 300% of what they usually are in other cities.

Under these conditions, no wonder why this event is decreasing in importance.

Comdex future

According to many attendees, the Las Vegas Comdex is about to disapear.

It is not realy astonishing when one consider how much it cost to travel to Las Vegas and especially to live here but this is mainly due to many other economical apsects that we must consider before to be able to solve this equation.

Nobodies ignore that the computer industry is suffering from stagnation since a couple of years and the sales are far away from what they were 2 or 3 years ago.

On the other hand, since the 11th of September 2001, the international tourism industry has not been able to get back the ground lost and the Americans are still affraid to take the airplane to travel.

Besides, the computer industry is in such a bad state that the Montreal Comdex just went to be cancelled and I'm realy not sure that the Toronto Comdex will not be cancelled either.

Personnally, it was my first Comdex and even if I liked my experience here I realy couldn't tell if I will come back again.

Considering the costs associated in attending such an event, it is pretty frustrating to learn that it was 4 times smaller than rthe preceding year. As a matter of fact, when one is coming here for the Comdex, it is not to see the beauty of the city, hotels and casinos but to see what the Comdex has to offer and when the event is not meeting its promises then everybody is in right to be deceived.

Please, don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that this year Comdex has been totally deceiving for me because I realy appreciated my participation to this event even if I've been staying a little on my hunger.

Conclusions

Taking into account that many majors of the computer industry are grouping together to held private events similar to the Comdex with more and more success, the future of the Comdex is becoming increasingly unsure.

Taking into account that the possibility to replace events suc has the Comdex, the Cebit and the Computex by permanent Online Internet exhibition is actually seriously studied and it is not difficult to realise that the real events might be closer to their end than never

Of course, no virtual event will replace the human contact but when considering the costs invloved to participate to such events in person, it is not complicated to see what the benefits would be for everyone if the real events were replaced by virtual events.

Many of the exhibitors that I didn't had the time to meet at the beginning of the week were gone Thursday afternoon even if the Condex was only ending today at 2:00pm.

It gives a good idea of how serious has been the decrease in the amount of visitors this year because if so many exhibitors went away rthat soon it is because there was no interest for them to stay here any longer.

Will we have another Comdex next year? I realy cannot answer this question.

Will we have another comdex in two years? I realy doubt about it....