Post-Macworld Expo Thoughts

So, Macworld 2010 has come and gone and now the post-mortem analy­sis can begin in earnest. Already sev­eral par­ties have weighed in on whether or not Macworld was a “suc­cess” this year; so I may as well throw in my two cents.

As I wrote pre­vi­ously, this year was my first attend­ing Macworld Expo, so I feel that I have a slightly dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive than some of the other com­menters who have more his­tory with the event. I’ll leave my over­all assess­ment and prog­nos­ti­ca­tions for the end of this piece, and focus on my impres­sions of a few key areas first.

The Media

The reac­tion of strictly media out­lets to this year’s Macworld Expo has been what I would call guard­edly opti­mistic. Most reports that I have read have acknowl­edged that, if Macworld is indeed dead, it’s not a Night of the Living Dead zom­bie but more of a rage fueled 28 Days Later zom­bie. On the other hand, most of those reports still pose the exis­ten­tial ques­tion, “will it be enough?”

I’m going to go ahead and restate the point that I made in the ear­lier piece linked above. My take is that, if you are in the media and saw past Macworld Expos as a venue for Apple to announce shiny new shit, Macworld is prob­a­bly dead to you going for­ward. On the other hand, if you are look­ing for sto­ries about the non-Apple ven­dors in the Apple mar­ket, then Macworld still has plenty to offer. None of that, though, is as much a reflec­tion on post-Apple Macworld Expo as it is a reflec­tion on trade shows in gen­eral. In the Internet age, Apple (or any com­pany really) can make more of a splash with a coy media invite and a timely leak to the Wall Street Journal than any num­ber of Macworld keynote speeches. And, in this econ­omy, it’s a hell of a lot cheaper to boot.

The bot­tom line is that it is true that the days of see­ing main­stream tra­di­tional media out­lets such as CNN or CNBC at Macworld are prob­a­bly over. The ques­tion that needs to be asked is: does that actu­ally have a neg­a­tive impact on the remain­ing exhibitors, or was the main­stream cov­er­age mainly focused on Apple any­way? That’s a judg­ment call that only the exhibitors can answer.

The Expo

There is no deny­ing that there were fewer exhibitors attend­ing Macworld this year than in years past. Without dig­ging up the exact num­bers, I think that the count was about half of what it was last year. Many pun­dits have been quick to blame this on the lack of an Apple pres­ence; argu­ing that, with­out the main­stream media draw that Apple pro­vides, ven­dors don’t see the point in attend­ing. That may very well be the case. But I think that attempt­ing to dis­till a very com­pli­cated issue into such sim­plis­tic terms is disin­gen­u­ous at best.

The deci­sion whether or not to exhibit at Macworld is a com­pli­cated one for any ven­dor, made even more com­pli­cated by the dif­fi­cult eco­nomic times that we find our­selves in. Exhibiting at a trade show such as Macworld Expo is a costly mat­ter, often with lit­tle to no imme­di­ate return. Compounding this is the fact that many of the same argu­ments that Apple itself has made regard­ing attend­ing trade shows can be applied to the smaller ven­dors as well. It is dif­fi­cult to jus­tify the expense of rent­ing a booth when the Internet is essen­tially free.

That said, it can be argued that there was still a great ben­e­fit for many of the ven­dors who attended. Firstly there were a plethora of smaller and spe­cialty hard­ware and soft­ware ven­dors in atten­dance whom I first became aware of by vis­it­ing their Macworld booths. These are shops that have, for what­ever rea­son, not been able to pen­e­trate the greater blogosphere’s mind­scape; yet they still are offer­ing com­pelling prod­ucts. Secondly, Macworld Expo offered a unique oppor­tu­nity for iPhone app ven­dors to be seen out­side the so-called app store ghetto, and to inter­act directly with their cur­rent and poten­tial customers.

One thing is for cer­tain. As I roamed the Expo show-floor myself, at no point did it seem empty. In fact, my innate hatred of crowded spaces was on point the entire time.

The other sign of chang­ing times on the Expo floor was the makeup of the exhibitors. While I was there I heard sev­eral jokes about the “iPhone Case Ghetto.” The thing is, if Macworld Expo is to sur­vive as a trade show, these are the exhibitors that IDG must court. The small shops who don’t have the New Media Douchebag con­nec­tions to get fea­tured by TechCrunch and their ilk, and will never see the shelves of an Apple Store.

The other side of the Expo, and an area where I think that Paul Kent and his IDG team really shined were the Main Stage speak­ers and Feature Presentations (and I’m not just say­ing that because the Angry Mac Bastards pod­cast was on the Main Stage). The three Feature Presentations that I was able to attend (Late Night with David Pogue, Kevin Smith and the iPad Special Event) were at turns, touch­ing, hilar­i­ous and infor­ma­tive. All three were stand­ing room only. I can hon­estly say that I derived more from them than I would have from a Steve Jobs keynote.

The Conference

While I have heard mainly praise for the Macworld Conference tracks, I am sad to say that I didn’t uti­lize the Conference ses­sions as much as hoped to. I don’t say this to in any way den­i­grate the ses­sions that were offered. The ses­sions that I attended were uni­formly infor­ma­tive, and I heard noth­ing but pos­i­tive com­ments for the ses­sions that I didn’t attend. The “fail­ure” of the Conference tracks lies mainly on myself, and where I lie in the Apple ecosystem.

As a “non-professional power-user” I found the Users con­fer­ence tracks to be mainly aimed either below my skill level or above my inter­est level, and the MacIT tracks didn’t apply to me at all. If I could offer one sug­ges­tion to Paul and the team, I would sug­gest that they try to offer more Users tracks aimed at a wider range of skill levels.

I’ll leave my cri­tique of the Conference por­tion of Macworld at that.

The Community

One preva­lent theme that ran through com­men­tary about Macworld, both before dur­ing and after the show was the idea of “com­mu­nity.” This is really a dif­fi­cult part of the equa­tion to fac­tor in because, with lit­tle excep­tion, it’s a part that lies out­side of IDG’s con­trol. I will say though that “com­mu­nity” is absolutely the right lens with which to view Macworld, and what a great com­mu­nity it is. This is a place where I think that my per­spec­tive as a new­bie to the Macworld com­mu­nity gives me the right insight to com­ment on it.

First of all, I want to thank Paul Kent and the rest of the IDG team. I’m fully aware that it’s Paul’s job to be a good host, but I’ve known many where weren’t half as gra­cious and wel­com­ing as he and his staff were. Paul’s per­sonal enthu­si­asm and com­mit­ment to the com­mu­nity is impos­si­ble to ignore. But even aside from Paul and the IDG staff, I can’t think of a sin­gle moment dur­ing my time at Macworld when I wasn’t made to feel a part of the com­mu­nity. I won’t even try to name names, because I know I will leave some­one out, but thanks to every­one who was a part of that.

The Future

The mil­lion dol­lar ques­tion is: was it enough? I don’t have the answer to that ques­tion. The only peo­ple who will be able to make that call are IDG World Expo. The bot­tom line is that this is a money mak­ing ven­ture. If the money isn’t there, then the Expo will go away. What I am pre­pared to say after attend­ing my first Macworld is that Paul Kent and his team seem com­mit­ted to doing all that they can to keep Macworld alive. I know that, if they can pull that off, I’ll be there next year. I hope you are too.