Event Evolution: The Changing Face of Tech

By Margo McCall -- Tradeshow Week, 8/1/2005

Just as Darwin's finches demonstrated natural selection by their evolving beak styles, so are show producers reacting to the changing technology marketplace by creating new event models.

Although some argue there's still a place for big horizontal technology shows, others have gone back to the drawing board, coming up with everything from targeted and invitation-only conferences to road shows and regional horizontal events. And according to those pushing the evolutionary envelope, the efforts are paying off.

TechTarget, a 6-year-old information technology integrated media company, now produces dozens of invitation-only events, along with 30 Web sites and three magazines. Its offerings are organized into nine different technology areas.

The Boston-based company produces three types of meetings: three-day conferences that draw 500 buyers and about 60 exhibitors, and are centered around a specific technology topic; one-day events geared to an even more specific technology topic, drawing fewer than 400 attendees to a dozen vendors; and one-day custom events where one vendor speaks on a specific topic.

"I think it's safe to say that horizontal shows in the tech space are dead," said TechTarget CEO Greg Strakosch. "Our whole model is based on targeting and ROI, and both those trends just continue to accelerate."

TechTarget not only focuses on broad technology areas, such as security, but also zeroes in on sub-areas, such as e-mail security. And because TechTarget weeds out non-buyers, vendor ROI is assured.

"Everyone has to qualify to attend. They are 100-percent buyers, 100-percent decision-makers of active budgets," Strakosch said.

Gartner's Vision Events has been using a similar model for the past 15 years, but with a twist. The company's 25 annual events, each targeted to a specific technology area, draw C-level attendees with lavish food, accommodations and entertainment.

Philip McKay, Vision group vice president and general manager, calls it the hosted model. "We're not looking for the mass quantities," he said.

Each event draws up to 400 quality attendees. The more than 100 vendors pay a premium for the chance to pitch their products to a high-level audience.

The firm launched its eighth event brand this year. Small Business Vision in 2005 will be held in eight cities, each featuring about 150 small service providers and resellers. McKay said Gartner suspected that the events would be a success, since the target audience, whose companies employ five to 50 people, normally don't attend tradeshows. But, he added, "Everybody was a little nervous at first."

Vision also produces events for the global sourcing, health care, IT channel, midsize enterprise and retail markets. At the events, attendees can sign up for "boardroom appointments," during which they can see new products; "one on ones" if they'd like more private meetings; networking sessions; roundtable discussions; and sessions with Gartner research analysts.

Vision's parent, Gartner, is also using a targeted approach for its Symposium/ITxpo events, which feature an abundance of conference sessions and vendors in nearly identical 10¡ä¡Á10¡ä booths.

Centric Events Group and Penton Media, meanwhile, are taking their events on the road.

When Centric Events bought ITEC from Imark Communications two years ago, the high-tech industry was in the doldrums. But Centric's founders, veterans of COMDEX and ZD Events, were confident that the series of regional shows would succeed.

Targeting the underserved small and midsize business niche, ITEC draws highly qualified audiences of about 100 buyers, and features an array of local and national vendors, mostly in 10¡ä¡Á10¡ä booths. The shows will take place in a dozen cities this year, and Centric has plans to add more cities next year.

"These are companies that don't have the time or the money to go to national events, if there are any for them," said COO Peter Shaw, who spent a decade working for COMDEX producer Interface Group before launching a custom events group for ZD Events.

Because ITEC shows draw mostly local audiences, they haven't been affected by business travel concerns or hotel issues. Since buying the events, Centric has pruned the list of cities, beefed up the attendee-qualification process and added conference sessions intended to give attendees a broad perspective on network security, VoIP and other topical technology areas.

"We made audience quality a big part of our promise about the rejuvenated ITEC. This is one of the areas where we're able to point to considerable success," Shaw said.

Centric secured partnership agreements with Microsoft and Intel for the spring show series, said Shaw, and hopes to repeat the arrangement for its fall shows. Over the past year, he added, the events overall have experienced a 30-percent increase in size.

Shaw said he and his team ¡ª which includes CEO Charles Forman; Peter Bowes, vice president of sales and customer development; and Kim Ray, vice president of product management ¡ª are gratified that the changes they've made are beginning to bear fruit.

"ITEC, the event and brand, is certainly doing the things we hoped it would do when we invested in it two years ago," Shaw said.

But where Centric is horizontal, Penton Media's road shows are decidedly vertical.

Since launching its Windows Security Tour in four cities in October 2002, in conjunction with its Windows & .NET magazine, Penton has hosted several road show series. In early 2003, Windows & .NET magazine took its Microsoft Mobility Tour to seven cities and its HP & Microsoft Network Storage Solutions Road Show to 10 cities.

Hewlett-Packard teamed up with Microsoft and Penton later in 2003 on taking the Mobile & Wireless Road Show to 10 cities.

The company's road shows for businesses migrating to Microsoft's SQL server have been so successful that the company recently added 15 more to this year's tour.

The one-day events, produced by Penton's Windows IT Pro Group, provide information about installation, upgrade, maintenance and enhancement of the latest version of the server. The presentations, made by representatives from Microsoft and its vendor partners, are geared to information technology professionals working in administration, development and business intelligence.

The $99 registration fee for the event also includes a one-year subscription to Penton's SQL Server magazine and an annual membership to the Professional Assn. for SQL Server, or PASS.

According to Penton, 95 percent of attendees are involved in equipment buying decisions and 61 percent hold management titles.

Michele Crockett, associate publisher of Penton's SQL Server magazine, said the tour has been popular among her readers. This is the first series to charge admission, and that is helping the conversion rate, or the number of registrants who actually show up at the event.

Crockett said Penton is using well-known training companies: Hitachi Consulting, Scalability Experts and Solid Quality Learning. "If you brought these guys in for a week, it would cost thousands of dollars," she said.

The events attract about 300 people each, and feature premiere sponsors, partner pavilions and tabletop displays. A dozen or more vendors usually participate.

Crockett stressed that attendees comprise "a very savvy technical audience" and that sessions are informational, rather than sales pitches. "It's not even remotely a sales pitch. It's, 'This is the information we have about SQL 2005,'" she said.

Although drawing a few hundred quality buyers may sound infinitely easier than drawing the thousands of buyers that attend horizontal tradeshows, both Strakosch and McKay say it's not.

"Getting 150 qualified people can be hard," said McKay.

Strakosch believes event-marketing budgets will continue to be cut. And in that environment, targeting and ROI will continue to be important. "The people who can execute against that will grow, and the people who can't won't," he said. "In the tech space, you're going to continue to see more and more targeting on the topic and more focus on ROI."