Intellectual Property Law

Are Trade Shows Dead or Dying?

By Cynthia Brumfield

Sad but not unexpected rumors are flying around that Pulver Media, the once-hugely successful company founded by VoIP pioneer Jeff Pulver, has been shut down. Pulver Media ran the formerly-hot trade show VON (disclosure: I ran two pre-conferences with VON last year, both entitled The New Video Summit) and had tooled up to be a significant direct marketing, publishing and events company.

I also count Jeff Pulver as a friend and entrepreneurial visionary, one whose moxie, hard work , kindness and passion are worth emulating.

Few people know that Jeff sold his stake in the company last fall to investors TICC Capital Group for $11 million. During the past two VON trade shows, Jeff wasn't really running the company.

Pulver Media was apparently looking at a steep revenue drop-off and TICC decided it was time to pull the plug. Although Pulver Media publishe(s?) (d?) a magazine and hosted webinars for sponsors, VON the, VoIP, and later video-on-the-net, trade show was the mainstay of the company.

VON was run like an old-fashioned industry convention, complete with general sessions, other educational sessions and exhibit space rentals. Aside from the fact that the VoIP business, the heart of VON, has been largely subsumed within established communications companies (think mostly cable operators), it is this traditional trade show aspect of VON that may have been its Achilles heel.

With the exception of CES, few old-timey trade shows are doing well these days. The trade show I know best, the cable industry's NCTA show, was once the highlight of cable's year, pouring tons of cash into the trade association. But now, thanks to consolidation, only three or four operators are worth wooing. Vendors, programmers, consultants and the usual trade show crowd find it difficult to spend several hundred thousand dollars, and in some cases millions, to pitch four guys.

The NCTA show has become more of a "see and be seen" event and not a way to conduct business or sell goods and services. The superb organizers of the NCTA show didn't even hold their usual press conference this year touting the show.

The NAB show, the annual fete of the country's TV and radio broadcasters, is going stronger, mostly because that industry hasn't experienced the same consolidation that its cable rival has. But how long can broadcasters, the mass media purveyors of the 20th century, keep it up? NXTComm, the trade show backed by the incumbent telcos, has a tortured recent past, formed out of two rival shows, Supercomm and TelecomNext.

VON may be the canary in the coal mine here. It's not affiliated with any of the major trade associations and is therefore more vulnerable. I have to admit that I've never been a big fan of trade shows -- they're exhausting, noisy, filled with far too many superficial conversations and, lately, not great for business. Still, it looks like the communications industry trade show world is about to undergo a major scaling back.

Full post as published by IP Democracy on March 29, 2008 (boomark / email).