Conference Producer Buys IDG's Bio-IT
By Margo McCall -- Tradeshow Week, 3/20/2006
Conference producer Cambridge Healthtech Institute has acquired Intl. Data Group's Bio-IT World properties.
Cambridge Healthtech President Phillips Kuhl said the acquisition of IDG's 4-year-old Bio-IT magazine, the Health-IT e-newsletter and the recently renamed Life Sciences Conference & Expo is part of a strategy to diversify revenues beyond the 80 conferences the company produces each year.
Kuhl said the company began to consider diversification after the post-Sept. 11 business travel slump. At the time, conferences generated 98 percent of company revenues.
Kuhl said his 14-year-old company's expertise with conferences should prove useful in building participation in the Life Sciences Conference & Expo, launched as Bio-IT World Conference & Expo in 2001.
"Certainly one of the things we felt was, we're very well versed in how to run events. We felt we could make some substantial improvements in the performance of the expo," he said.
The conference, renamed last year from Bio-IT, is set for April 3–5 at the Sheraton Hotel Boston. Kuhl said his company wouldn't be ready to unveil its new strategy for the show by then, but will consider changes to its conference content, timing and name.
"It's tough to gear up for something you're only doing once a year and expect to bring the kind of efficiencies we've figured out by doing events like this over and over month after month," he said.
Thirteen IDG employees assigned to the publications and event will join the 60-employee Cambridge Healthtech as part of the acquisition. The company plans to enlist Bio-IT's experienced editors to help produce conference content. "It will get them involved with much more contact with many more events," Kuhl said.
IDG will continue to hold a minority stake in the properties. Cambridge will subcontract IDG World Expo to produce this year's Life Sciences event, but after that the task will be brought in-house, Kuhl said.
Three years ago, the Bio-IT World Conference & Expo drew about 84 exhibitors to a 12,000 net square foot showfloor. Kuhl said the event now has about 50 exhibitors.
Most of the Newton, Mass.-based Cambridge Healthtech's conferences are in the pharmaceutical and diagnostic realms. Its Molecular Medicine Tri-Conference in San Francisco earlier this month attracted about 2,100 researchers and 100 exhibitors. Among its other events are Beyond Genome, PepTalk and the World Pharmaceutical Congress.
Cambridge also owns Pharma Week, a Web-based publication, and Pharmaceutical Discovery, a Web and print publication it purchased from Advanstar Communications last year.
Kuhl said Cambridge Healthtech approached Advanstar about buying the pharmaceutical magazine after the company decided it would be discontinued. The properties were a perfect fit, since there was a strong correlation between the content of the magazine and Cambridge Healthtech's conferences, as well as its advertisers and subscribers, and the conference's exhibitors and attendees.
IDG World Expo still manages Macworld Conference & Expo, LinuxWorld Conference & Expo and a number of conference-driven technology events.
