Macworld Musings: An Outsider’s Perspective

Following the brouhaha over the future of the Macworld Conference and Expo is inter­est­ing to me, because I am essen­tially an out­sider here. When the Angry Mac Bastards do our thing there this year it will be the first time that I have attended a Macworld, ever. I sup­pose that this gives me a dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive on things than many of the peo­ple who have com­mented on the mat­ter. For one thing, my opin­ion isn’t col­ored by mem­o­ries (dis­torted or not) of pre­vi­ous Macworlds.

The biggest thing that stands out to me is that the major­ity of the peo­ple who seem to be beat­ing the “Macworld is doomed” drum are jour­nal­ists and blog­gers. That makes sense to me. I can fully under­stand how, if the main ben­e­fit that some­one derives from attend­ing a Macworld is being among the first to hear and report on the words of His Steveness, Apple’s absence makes the con­fer­ence point­less. And with­out an Apple booth to allow jour­nal­ists to get their grubby hands on Apple’s lat­est and great­est for their “first look” arti­cles, the show floor is also pretty worthless.

Of course, as oth­ers have pointed out, Macworld is not just about the keynote and show floor. At it’s heart Macworld is trade show and indus­try con­fer­ence. Many other indus­tries have sim­i­lar shows/conferences with­out the dog and pony show of a Stevenote, and they mud­dle along just fine.

Again, as oth­ers have pointed out, there are many fac­tors that will have an effect on the future via­bil­ity of Macworld. Macworld may thrive, and it may well fail. If Macworld does fail though, the blame will fall squarely on the shoul­ders of one orga­ni­za­tion. That orga­ni­za­tion is…not Apple. If Macworld fails it will not be because Apple “aban­doned the com­mu­nity.” As oth­ers have pointed out numer­ous times, even sans Apple the trade show and con­fer­ence aspects of Macworld have the poten­tial to bring value. If that value is insuf­fi­cient to bring in enough ven­dors and con­fer­ence atten­dees then the blame will fall entirely on IDG.

Understand that, when I write that the (poten­tial) fail­ure of Macworld is IDG’s respon­si­bil­ity, I don’t intend to cast them as vil­lains any more than Apple. That’s because there are no vil­lains here. Regardless of what­ever fond mem­o­ries you may have of Macworlds past, or how much fun I intend to have there, the bot­tom line is that Macworld isn’t a party, it’s a prod­uct. If that prod­uct fails in the mar­ket, then so be it. Perhaps another ven­dor will cre­ate a bet­ter one.

At any rate, there’s my two cents as a Macworld vir­gin. Hopefully they can help pro­vide some perspective.