MediaLive's Interop Expands to New York

By Margo McCall -- Tradeshow Week, 5/23/2005

MediaLive Intl.'s Interopis alive and kicking, with a new name and venue and plans to expand the show to New York.

The San Francisco-based show producer wrapped up this year's May 1–6 event, held at Mandalay Bay Convention Center for the first time, with 375 exhibitors and about 17,500 attendees, according to preliminary figures. That compares with the 340 exhibitors and 16,000 attendees who turned out in 2004, the information technology show's final year at the Las Vegas Convention Center.

Lenny Heymann, Interop general manager, said attendees appreciated the close proximity of conference sessions, the exhibit floor and hotel rooms. "We knew going in that that was going to be one of the positives," he said, adding that, "We would have had a great show no matter where we were."

The 20-year-old event, whose name was changed last month from NetWorld+Interop, will return to Mandalay in 2006 and 2007 as part of a three-year contract.

Although it took more preparation to install the show's event network in the new venue, Heymann said the building staff was "extremely cooperative," even letting hardware provider Extreme Networks run the network through Mandalay Bay's own wiring.

Air Defense, a network security firm exhibiting at the event, said it detected a host of attacks on the Wi-Fi network. Heymann, however, said that was to be expected in a heavily used network.

During this year's show, MediaLive announced the launch of Interop New York at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center Dec. 11–16. Heymann said exhibitors had been asking for an East Coast version for two years, but MediaLive officials were waiting for momentum to build before taking that step.

Show management projects the inaugural show will draw 150 exhibitors and 10,000 attendees. Heymann said 75 exhibitors have signed up so far. "Clearly, there's a need for a large IT event on the East Coast. We see it as a real opportunity."

With the continued postponement of COMDEX, Interop is now MediaLive's biggest show. But it still remains much smaller than during its 2001 peak, when it attracted 61,000 attendees and 848 exhibitors to a 525,859 net square foot showfloor and ranked No. 32 on the Tradeshow Week 200.

That was the year ZD Events sold the show to MediaLive, under its earlier incarnation as publicy traded Key3Media Group. The market for networking equipment was big enough then to also support an Atlanta show that drew more than 400 exhibitors and 20,000 attendees.

The following year, Networld+Interop drew about 40,000 attendees and 572 exhibitors to a 320,000 net sq. ft. floor and fell to No. 63 on the TSW 200. The year after that, as IT companies reported sales slumps and rounds of layoffs, the show disappeared from the list of the country's largest shows.