Comdex Pursues Edification Rather Than Entertainment

XarsonX writes "Infoworld has an article talking about some of the changes coming to Comdex this year. Amongst other things, a $50 price tag for uninvited attendants, and less free gear handed out. Is it still possible to get enough free vendor-wear to fill your entire wardrobe?"

Comments

You know, because I was wondering

[Hilleh]

Is it still possible to get enough free vendor-wear to fill your entire wardrobe?

Slashdot - facing the important and relevant issues that I am sure confront us all on a daily basis.

Re:You know, because I was wondering

[Angry White Guy]

That's the only reason to go to tradeshows. I have enough pens and mousepads, shirts, jackets, etc to supply the local gradeschool.

That and business cards.

Why else would you go to a computer tradeshow, to pick up chicks?

Re:You know, because I was wondering

[Uart]

Technically since it costs 50 bucks to get in, you can't really get ANY "free" vendor-wear.

*Uart gets his Apple T-Shirts by begging at the Apple store.

Re:You know, because I was wondering

[Anonymous Coward]

Gnomedex all the way!!

Go Lockergnome!!!!!

Wardrobe

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it still possible to get enough free vendor-wear to fill your entire wardrobe?

No, but i hear there will be a SCO t-shirt burning this year at it..

Re:Wardrobe

[Angry White Guy]

Donate them to charity instead of burning them. That way the current board will know what they're going to look like in five years. Sitting on a street corner with a tin cup and a sco shirt.

Fully clothed?

[I Am The Owl]

Is it still possible to get enough free vendor-wear to fill your entire wardrobe?

You mean there are vendors giving out pants? That's just awesome.

Re:Fully clothed?

[Fishead]

[Millikin hopes that by refocusing the show, MediaLive can make all parties happier. "You get more bang for your buck by being serious and focusing on the content, and not focusing on the elephants balancing on the chairs," he said.] So... is it just the overweight geeks they are trying to exclude? Maybe the vendors will just not stock the 3XL sizes?

Re:Fully clothed?

[The Original Yama]

Do any vendors give out underwear? What about socks?

Re:Fully clothed?

[Anonymous Coward]

Pants? You can get the 'Official Slashdot Mumu', for all your 12XL geeking needs!

Re:Fully clothed?

[Anonymous Coward]

Free Oracle shoes - so you can step on the "little people" just like Larry Ellison.

Re:Fully clothed?

[blibbleblobble]

"You mean there are vendors giving out pants? That's just awesome."

Do debian panties count?

Or a KDE thong?

Re:Fully clothed?

[Anonymous Coward]

i cant wear thongs... one nut always pops out the side... push it in and the other pops out... i hate it! sso now i just go commando!

Re:Fully clothed?

[pcmills]

Trying to get the Cowboy Neal model out of my head. Damn you!

Advertising

[The Original Yama]

"Is it still possible to get enough free vendor-wear to fill your entire wardrobe?"

What, you actually like being a walking advertising billboard? Some of us have a thing called dignity which prevents us from stooping to such a level.

Re:Advertising

[Blenderkitty]

Some of us have a thing called dignity which prevents us from stooping to such a level.

Some of us have things called student loans which make it easier.

Re:Advertising

[1u3hr]

Some of us have things called student loans which make it easier.

If you're living on student loans of course you'd travel to Las Vegas and rent a hotel room, in the hope of getting a free T-shirt, some mousepads and AOL CDROMS. All that stuff must be worth at least $9.75.

Re:Advertising

[thogard]

Student loans and Las Vegas? I don't know if it still works but some grad students use to go there for spring break. There were about a minivan worth of EE studetns that would go all put up a bit of money and one guy would deposit it the casino. Then every day he would take out 1/7th and give it back to its owners. From the casino's point of view the guy was a sucker worth a free room and other free stuff. The the students, it was a free trip where they got to camp out in a nice free room.

Re:Advertising

[Anonymous Coward]

Ever consider some people might like to advertise companies they like?

Of course not, because you are an ungreatful self-righteous dickhead who thinks he is above everybody else.

Re:Advertising

[Anonymous Coward]

And look at you, throwing the insults around. Advertising is a vicious beast. Look it up on the internet sometime, you might learn something.

Well it's make or break time ...

[SuperDuG]

The re-entrenchment of Comdex as a business-focused show is a natural response to Comdex's excessive growth in the late 1990s, when the fall show attracted more than 200,000 attendees annually, Millikin said. "Five years ago, Comdex did not have a defined purpose," he said. This year the show will make a much more concerted effort to attract vendors and attendees interested in specific topic areas such as Web services, security, and open source software, he added.

With this type of decision you have two directions you can go, way up or way down. The problem is that since Comdex didn't define itself, the patrons and vendors of comdex did. They said, "cool new computer stuff that people are trying to make money with", and everyone bought into it, because remember kids computers and computer fields are followed ONLY for the money. Comdex had proof of concepts that were beyond belief but then would become standard in a few years (anyone remember buy-a-car.com?). Not only can you buy used cars in tons of places you can buy them on ebay now too.

If Comdex wants to change the pace of what it does and they want to survive then all the power to them, but you don't start something and then just expect to change it because things aren't going the way you envisioned them.

My prediction ... Comdex isn't even newsworthy in 3 years.

Re:Well it's make or break time ...

[ergo98]

COMDEX became largely irrelevant because of a change of technology that we're all using right now: The Internet. Prior to the Internet, COMDEX was where every vendor would show off their latest wares to the collected media (literally holding its release until the big trade show), and all of the writers for PC Week, PC Magazine, Compute!, STart, and every other magazine would run to the banks of phones to call in their reports about the new Diamond Speedstar 24x or new MFM hard drive. I remember all of the COMDEX special editions packed full of revolutionary new products. With the internet, however, vendors no longer hold their releases, and vendor information is as easy as http://www.somecompany.com. The Internet changed the world more than many of us realize (because it was gradual), and the decline of COMDEX is just another reality of a "new world order".

I went to the LV COMDEX in maybe 1999 and it was, quite literally, a waste of time. No companies were actually releasing products, but instead it was a bunch of brochures that were less comprehensive than you could find on the net, with representatives that barely knew the product. The halls were filled with end users (i.e. non decision makers) who were more concerned with scoring a 5 cent pen or cheesy bag.

COMDEX will never be what it was again, but if they did limit attendance to decision makers at corporations they might have a chance of getting a niche.

Re:Well it's make or break time ...

[qqtortqq]

I went to Comdex its last year in Chicago. Myself and my 2 best friends ditched school to go, had our parents call us in sick. I had to make a fake ID for myself because I was only 17 at the time, and you had to be 18... And they did actually check it. We had a blast, but from what I understand, it seems like Comdex went downhill after they moved out of Chicago.

cdxpo ????

[Webdude]

So I wonder if cdxpo may take over for comdex then????

http://www.cdxpo.com/

free gear.

[Suppafly]

and less free gear handed out.

Isn't the free gear handed out by the vendors? How does comdex have any control over that? There maybe more free gear this year than ever, they don't know.

Re:free gear.

[wideBlueSkies]

I was there in 1997. Comdex itself was handing out thick books full of ads, daily newspapers, big plastic shopping bags, t-shirts.... I think I saw a couple of frisbees and coffe mugs floating around the floor too.

Though the amount of stuff handed out by the vendors was far greater. I've never seen so many useless things in my life.

Anway, I've never been back. I went there with high hopes and the show was a big dud.

Re:free gear.

[Reziac]

No idea if any outfit ever does this, but there's no reason the vendor contract can't say "you can only hand out software, not T-shirts".

As to this attempt to redefine vendor and attendee interests against how they've already evolved, I suspect that's a recipe for failure.

Re:free gear.

[Suppafly]

I was at an ACM conference once where the vendors weren't supposed to give out merchandise, but a bunch of them did anyway.. One vendor just gave out plastic bags(which wasn't disallowed) so that people would have something to put all of the disallowed vendor stuff into.

Re:free gear.

[zerus]

I started going to comdex in 94. The shows in Atlanta used to be great. Meaning I'd come home with a few shirts, maybe a new software suite. One year I came back with news parts. But, as the stock markets started to realize that a guy who says he might have an idea about something that might make money probably isn't a good investment, the computer industry slowed down. The dot coms started to fail because there was no financial backing because they couldn't produce the 2000% profits that they had when they went IPO. The industry was overly full of money, as seen from the vendors just giving away all sorts of items and various crap at their booths. Nowadays, you're lucky if they give you a little thing of mints. My how the industry has changed.

Re:free gear.

[Reziac]

Free plastic bags to hide the forbidden swag in, that's pretty funny!

T-shirt burning, hell

[Anonymous Coward]

If SCO shows up at COMDEX it's going to be like the stoning scene from Monty Python's "Life of Brian" with IBM as the old guy John Cleese accuses of blasphemy and wants the crowd to stone.

Re:T-shirt burning, hell

[Angry White Guy]

I don't care who's playing who, as long as I get to throw a rock!

Free Stuff

[GillBates0]

I still fondly remember those good ol' days where companies used to hand out tons of high-quality free stuff at Career Fairs. At a particularly memorable one, the year before last, I managed to grab the following inventory of items:
Google I'm Feeling Lucky T-Shirt
Cisco foldable stapler
IBM Pen and Glow Keychain
IBM FM/AM radio with earphones
Lucent drawstring laundry bag
Microsoft shitty yoyos which doesn't work
Verizon and Metlife frisbees
SGI funky twisty rubbery thing
Siemens marker set
Comcast inflatable ball
Kodak disposable camera
Broadcom fridge magnet
Honda trendy packpack
Texas Instruments CD wallet
EMC2 T-Shirt
On the other hand, this year most companies were handing out only pens and other cheapo stuff, which I thought was below my dignity to collect.

Re:Free Stuff

[liquidsin]

Microsoft shitty yoyos which doesn't work

So their yo-yos are like their servers...they go down but then they won't come back up? *rimshot*

Re:Free Stuff

[Anonymous Coward]

Uhm, yo-yos do go back up, jackass.

Re:Free Stuff

[Anonymous Coward]

You are an idiot.

Re:Free Stuff

[lpret]

SGI funky twisty rubbery thing

I think that was a dildo...

Re:Free Stuff

[maxume]

Those IBM radios suck. They are useless. I hate them.

Re:Free Stuff

[Anonymous Coward]

Errr no . . .their servers are like your mammy - They go down and swallow hard

Re:Free Stuff

[Anonymous Coward]

Google I'm Feeling Lucky T-Shirt
[snip]
On the other hand, this year most companies were handing out only pens and other cheapo stuff, which I thought was below my dignity to collect.

I do not think the word "dignity" means what you think it means.

Re:Free Stuff

[Tokerat]

Actually it's a marketing ploy: The reason the yo-yo doesn't work is the string is only a inch long, and MS can simply act like the yo-yo gets 99.999% uptime.

Is the end of whacky stage shows?

[MattGWU]

I guess this means we won't be seeing Weird Al smashing any old computers or monitors this year at Comdex.

I guess it really IS all about the Pentiums.

Re:Is the end of whacky stage shows?

[Anonymous Coward]

We may not have Weird Al, but Gallagher is probably lower budget. Can't you picture Gallagher at the IBM booth going Sledge-o-Matic on a copy of SCO OpenServer?

What!?

[ErikZ]

"Key3Media Group, the trade show company that manages the annual Las Vegas IT show, emerged from its recent Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings on Thursday..."

The people that manage COMDEX went bankrupt?! What the hell? Were they handing out lumps of gold at the doors or something?!

COMDEX: No Longer for Us

[n9fzx]

So the suits at COMDEX only want to put on a show for other suits. Thus concludes the transition to crying boredom that began a few years ago when they booted out the adult entertainment industry -- which is always the first adopter for any new communications technology.

Isn't it about time that someone started a new trade show, one for us? It would be in Vegas (or maybe Reno, just for spite). Tons of raw technology. Booth babes. And a tradeshow trinket requirement. Heck, have a "best of show trinket" award, they get their booth space fee back! Now that would be worth the trip.

Re:COMDEX: No Longer for Us

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't that what DEFCON is for? (sorta?)

KDE Thong "Junior sizes"??!?!?!

[lpret]

From the link: This product is designed to fit juniors. It fits snug, sizes run small.

Umm, what kind of juniors are we talking about? Hopefully college ones...

I still have

[Anonymous Coward]

a couple of Intel 386 in lucite keychains. I guess I am not as jaded as the rest, because I still have fond memories of those days.

Re:I still have

[GnarlyNome]

Well I have a intel 4004 chip in lucite. (showing my age)

Jeez

[yaj]

You mean I'm actually gonna have to start buying clothes soon??

And My wardrobe from all those SCO Forums (1,2,3,4) doesn't fit me anymore...

Oh, But They're Not

[Greyfox]

They're going to make enemies of the entire industry trying to destroy one of the most revolutinary concepts to come along this century and no matter what happens to the company they're going to walk away with more money than you or I will ever make in a lifetime.

Re:Oh, But They're Not

[waspleg]

going to? it already shows them dumping stocks

they have the money in hand already

not new to most of us...

[Lumpy]

Almost all the shows have faded into bland-ness, if they havent disappeared altogether.. Hell it started 2 years ago when CES became a suits-2-suits venture, comdex that year also was more toned down and you had to fight to get goodies out of the vendor booths.... I.E. "Oh you're a develper? here's a pen..." instead of that T-shirt or Hat he handed to the guy with the suit that was just there...

when things started to tighten up, the free-stuff is the first to go.. Although I do remember both novell and Microsoft handing out Gobs of stuff last year wiuth "KEEP IT LEGAL" all over it..

Vendors are finding that going to shows is more of an expense than the leads it generates, and most companies have stopped sending people for a while now... In fact cince January last year the company's policy has been no shows on the company dime, and you must take your own vacation time for them.

Shows were a waste of company time anyways.. I hated spending 2 months after fighting off sales calls from every vendor I gave my smartcard to in order to get their cheezy crap.. Most of the keynote speakers usually didn't have much to say other than the light coating designed for the suits to hear. Hopefully in a few years it will bounce back, but I doubt it... I think the time for them has past...

I feel sick

[Dogtanian]

I hated spending 2 months after fighting off sales calls from every vendor I gave my smartcard to in order to get their cheezy crap..

An awful realisation just leapt up on me. What if they weren't just giving away all that stuff out of the goodness of their hearts? What if it was all just a cynical ploy to drum up business and make money?...

I hope this isn't true, and that we can still trust computer salespeople, but if it isn't.... folks, I have to break this to you. It looks like Microsoft and IBM might be starting to value money over the affection of computer users everywhere.

Lack of Style.

[minitrue]

Is it still possible to get enough free vendor-wear to fill your entire wardrobe?

Oh man, you just made me realize why my gf hates going out with me in public! i'm a total fucking geek!

Not much free schwag

[Anonymous Coward]

I went to Comdex last year, and it was pretty muted. I didn't get any toys or T-shirts or hats or free snacks or anything. There also weren't any elaborate sets or performances.

Tickets

[bugninja]

So, how do you get tickets for Comdex? Do you pay at the door? Their site says nothing about this from what I can find. I don't care what anyone says. It sounds fun, and I'll be there.

RE: Walking billboard?

[King_TJ]

Actually, I see no problem wirh wearing free clothing with advertising on it. Usually, I'm interested enough or enough involved with the products in question that I'm happy to advertise that fact. (I mean, I'm not going to wear shirts advertising golf gear because I don't golf, and don't visit golf "super sales" or conventions where such free items would be given out.)

Other times, I simply wear the clothing in situations that make it obvious I'm bashing the product on my t-shirt. (EG. I often wear one of my free Microsoft "launch event" t-shirts when I'm selling refurbished Apple Macs at flea markets. Most of the time, people get a small laugh out of it.)

Dang

[foldedspace]

$50 to see marketing people and sales people pushing educational what?

I've been thinking of going to COMDEX for a Vegas vactaion for about ten years. It's getting less and less likely that I'll ever go now. Depressing news.

HAHAHA

[Anonymous Coward]

Comdex is a waste of time. The only reason anybody attends is its location. Its an added vacation to any IT persons agenda. Those days have passed and the reduced attendance and lack of free shit proves it.