MediaLive Closes Book on Seybold

Just eight years ago, the San Francisco version of Seybold drew 43,000 attendees and 350 exhibitors. In Chicago last month, a scant 200 people and five vendors showed up to the once-popular gathering for those in the publishing technology business.

Faced with such a dismal turnout, MediaLive Intl. finally pulled the plug on the nearly 20-year-old event brand. The decision came after the company tried twice to reposition the event, first by adding 10 educational sessions in 2003, then last year by expanding the San Francisco tradeshow to Chicago and New York.

"Everything has a beginning, a middle and an end," said Eric Faurot, senior vice president and managing director of MediaLive's technology media group. He added that MediaLive is now focusing on small emerging technology conferences, such as the Mobile Business Expo, which drew 2,000 attendees to Chicago's Navy Pier-Festival Hall Oct. 9–12.

In a statement, MediaLive said it was canceling the Seybold seminars "due to insufficient vendor and attendee interest."

The light attendance angered at least one exhibitor at the inaugural Seybold Chicago, held at the Hyatt Regency McCormick Place Sept. 12–14.

"It was terrible," said Randy Evans, vice president of sales and marketing for Comosoft, a maker of retail catalog publishing systems. "They sold us something that was completely different from (what we saw) when we walked in."

According to Evans, who said he asked for and was denied a refund, the vendors were shifted from a ballroom to an entry foyer at the last minute. Organizers told him they got bumped from the ballroom, but Evans said he suspects the change was made to make the exhibit area look less deserted.

"It's too bad," he said. "That's been a good forum for us."

In recent years, the printing industry has been hit by consolidation as companies struggled to make the transition to digital processing and deal with excess capacity. CMM Intl., a biennial Tradeshow Week 200 show that Paperloop recently sold to PennWell, saw its 2003 showfloor decline to 257,000 net square feet and 662 exhibitors, from 369,000 net sq. ft. and 770 exhibitors in 2001.

Not all printing shows are suffering, however. The Graphic Arts Show Co.'s quadrennial TSW 200 PRINT '05 & CONVERTING '05, with which Seybold Chicago collocated, featured 954 exhibitors and 62,000 attendees, compared with 788 exhibitors and 64,000 attendees in its 2001 incarnation.

Furthermore, GASC, a group comprised of three printing associations, is working with the Flexographic Technical Assn. to launch a biennial show called PackPrintSM. The new show will attempt to bridge the gap between commercial and package printing, and will collocate with GASC's GRAPH EXPO, set for Sept. 9–12, 2007, at Chicago's McCormick Place.

When last held with GASC's CONVERTING EXPO in 2003, GRAPH EXPO drew 38,000 attendees to a 365,000 sq. ft. showfloor with 655 exhibitors, earning it a TSW 200 ranking.

Under ZD Events' ownership, the original San Francisco Seybold made it onto the TSW 200 for several years in the late '90s. Its 154,000 net sq. ft. floor with 350 exhibitors drew 43,000 publishing technology buyers in 1997. The following year, another 1,000 sq. ft. and 25 exhibitors joined the floor. After 1999, when the show was No. 195 on the listing of the country's 200 largest shows, Seybold disappeared from the ranking.

The cancellation marks the second demise of a once-powerful MediaLive brand in North America. In June 2004, the San Francisco-based company mothballed the legendary COMDEX technology show, also due to insufficient vendor interest. The COMDEX brand lives on with an annual show in Athens, Greece.

As with COMDEX, MediaLive tried hard to engineer a comeback for Seybold, which John Seybold began in the 1970s as a publishing technology consulting practice.

In July 2003, MediaLive added the educational sessions, retooled the exhibit floor and established an online community called Seybold365. A year later, the company came up with the expansion plan, gearing the San Francisco and New York versions toward creative and workflow markets, and Chicago and the established Amsterdam, Netherlands, versions toward digital automation of publishing workflow. MediaLive at the time also promised additional Seybold events aimed at content management.

The cancellation of Seybold came just five months after MediaLive hired Drew Miller as general manager of the Seybold conference series and the Seybold Report publication. Miller, who previously worked for Miller Freeman and Paperloop, has left the company, according to a receptionist. James M. Smith, who oversaw Seybold for many years before moving over to the Collaborative Technologies Conference, has also left the company.

MediaLive has been using a brand-expansion strategy on its other established events. Versions of Interop (formerly called NetWorld + Interop) is scheduled to take place in New York, Paris, Tokyo and Moscow in addition to Las Vegas, according to the MediaLive Web site. Anaheim and Tokyo will join Orlando as sites for VoiceCon.