Not Playing Games

Former E3 organizer Mary Dolaher shoots for a high score once again in the video game world for her new employer, IDG World Expo

Rachelle Crum -- Tradeshow Week, 1/8/2007

Almost immediately after the 24-member Entertainment Software Assn. announced in July that it would discontinue its massive trade-only E³/Electronic Entertainment Expo, multiple investors and firms interested in launching similar shows began courting the show's manager, Mary Dolaher.

That didn't surprise anyone. During the show's 12-year run, Dolaher grew the Intl. CES offspring into a 60,000-attendee, Trade-show Week 200-ranked (No. 31 in 2005) media frenzy, where virtually every video game firm showed off the newest and hottest wares.

IDG World Expo was the victor among Dolaher's suitors, hiring her and 10 other former ESA staffers in November. Dolaher, a former employee of parent firm Intl. Data Group, which launched E³, is now the expo division's executive vice president. In her new post at the company's Framingham, Mass., headquarters, the Boston native oversees all of IDG World Expo's events.

Along with the firm's mainstay shows, such as Macworld Conference & Expo and the LinuxWorld Conference & Expo series, Dolaher will manage two new events that IDG is producing and the ESA is sponsoring: the invite-only E³ Media & Business Summit July 11–13 in Santa Monica, Calif., and a yet-unnamed consumer video game show Oct. 18–20 at E³'s former home, the Los Angeles Convention Center.

Tradeshow Week Senior Assistant Editor Rachelle Crum spoke with Dolaher as she prepared to open Macworld and take the video game industry by storm — one more time.

Question: In October, the ESA announced the demise of E³ and the launch of the summit. A month later, IDG World Expo said it had recruited you to launch the consumer show. Was this fall the rollercoaster ride that it seemed?

Answer: It was an exciting six months. I felt, from the time the board decided that the current format of E³ wasn't answering their needs, that there would still be a need for another tradeshow in this channel. My reason for thinking that was because every year we've been approached to run an E³-type of event, but for consumers, and we've always been approached to run it overseas.

So, as hard as that news was to hear, and as hard as it was to leave the current format of E³, I felt in the back of my mind that the show would go on in some format.

Q: What role did you play in the decision to launch the new shows?

A: The cancellation of E³ was rather abrupt, by industry standards. The board determines what's best for them and for the industry as a whole, and my role was to help facilitate that in the least financially exposing way possible.

I did that, and immediately after the news broke (July 31), I had several calls from investors and people who wanted me to launch the show on their behalf. So, August to September was spent evaluating whether I would start up an LLC (limited liability corporation) and run this on my own with the investment money, or I would go on to another company and take the show there.

At the end of the day, I narrowed it down to three offers and performed due diligence over two months. My goal, really, was to try to keep the (E³) team intact, and to have the existing team run a new event if we were to do that. So, I had those offers. I also had the opportunity to run the E³ media festival with a reduced staff. I could have stayed and done that, but my heart was in running large expositions, as opposed to strictly hotel shows.

All the stars aligned, and everything worked out great for me and for my team. We still run the media festival, we're still closely aligned with the ESA — which we really value — and we also get to run the new show with the ESA endorsement under the IDG umbrella, with all IDG's resources and bandwidth from (IDG-owned) magazine and web site GamePro and all of their online game sites.

Q: E³ certainly appeared to be a success. Why the need for all this change?

A: The E³ exhibitors can afford to fly their retailers to their operations, to see all the media that they want, to have private tours. So, if you're doing that and doing a booth that costs you $10 (million) to $20 million, it seems ludicrous.

But to do a booth that might only cost you $5 million, and to reach all of the consumers in the buying season right before the big holiday push, then that's a much better solution. That's the goal of the new show. It's not to have two-story booths with elevators and have exhibitors spending exorbitant amounts of money.

Q: Why is it better for IDG to manage the ESA's events than the association itself?

A: If you look at the number of people it takes to run the summit, especially the first year around, you would assume that you're going to need maybe three or four people if you're running an event that's between 3,000 and 8,000 people. However, now they have a staff with IDG, which is overseeing this and is the show management company for it. They have a staff of 25 people and can expand to 40 if they need it.

It's almost like when you hire a PR firm. You might hire them for a certain number of people but, when you need that extra bandwidth, it's there. And having this as our first time running the summit for them, they're not even sure what their needs are. It all evolves slowly.

Q: You ran E³ since it began in 1995. What was it like to see it end?

A: It was a very difficult thing. There were 500 exhibitors at E³ and the (ESA) board needed to do what they felt made the best business decision for themselves and for the industry. I just kept focusing on the other 475 exhibitors and thinking that there's got to be a show there for them. I focused on that, and then how to run the summit and answer all the needs that the members had.

The most difficult part was, of course, telling my staff. They did everything right, yet they could still be out looking for a job. You run a great show, you hit every profit number and surpass it, you answer every need ... We had a lot of people envious and (who) would have loved to have had the problems we had on E³. ... To have to say to everyone, "I'm sorry, it's coming to an end," was just extremely disappointing.

Q: There were reports that E³'s demise came from large exhibitors pulling out due to the high cost of putting on parties and building enormous, elaborate booths. Were they accurate?

A: That's part of it. The exhibit space that they purchased was really the lowest part of the equation.

Part of it is the development that it takes to have a game ready every year. When you launch hardware — that comes out once every four or five years — the games that come out that follow that ... they have to be pumping a game out every year.

When you have a show in May — or at any time of year — you have to literally stop the company from operating, and the focus from January to May has to be on just E³: what's going to show there, who's going to design the booth, what the party's going to be. There's a lot of that resource that's just focused on the show. So, as a business model, it doesn't always make sense.

What a lot of the exhibitors did — at least on the ESA side of it — was take their booth from the show, take elements of it, bring it back to their buildings — to their compound, because a lot of them are very massive companies — and rebuild their booth. Then they would fly in all of these retailers for one-on-one meetings so that you didn't have the distraction of the whole showfloor.

This way, they can have the one-on-one meetings, do the order-taking in July. They'll have kiosks, they'll have the media attention and they'll have retailers there — hopefully, a high level of retailers.

Q: The booths at the new summit will be standardized turnkey displays ranging from 100 to 400 square feet. Will the consumer show be similarly regimented?

A: We will have regulations, but it won't be 100 to 400 sq. ft.

At the summit, the only place where the booths will be are at the Barker Hangar. It's only a 30,000 sq. ft. airplane hangar. It's a great, trendy place to hold an event, but when you get down to sellable space, it's only 15,000 sq. ft. So, it's not like we're trying to recreate a tradeshow floor. We really want to make sure that people come in, they send in a product, they send in the hardware, their games are up and displayed. The media will be allowed in, we'll probably do it afternoons, like 1–7 p.m. In the mornings, we are going to have all of the press conferences from the software companies at the hotels.

Q: What about regulations on attire at the consumer show? Will you enforce — at the new shows — the E³ dress code policy prohibiting live models from wearing revealing costumes?

A: We'll have the same policy we had last year.

Q: How many exhibitors do you have confirmed for the July event?

A: We started re-sign on the summit on Jan. 4. We anticipate 24 members. Each (ESA) member selects their space. Once that's done, we'll reach out to other people in the industry. How many people we'll be able to accommodate at that point, I don't know. It's very difficult to forecast a number.

Q: What about for the October consumer show?

A: Even in my days of running E³, I never forecast numbers. I don't want to jinx myself.

Q: Will the invitation-only aspect of the summit apply to just exhibitors, or to both exhibitors and attendees?

A: For the summit, it will be invite-only for the attendees. The 24 ESA members have sent us all (potential attendee) lists. We only want them to invite the people they have meetings with. ESA is not going to be inviting people.

Q: What did you learn from E³ that will help you with all of the IDG events that you will now oversee?

A: I did everything the way I've always learned: listen to the audience, listen to the customers. It's unfortunate that we ended up in the situation that we were in, but I'm also here now at (IDG) World Expo, and we're headed for great things because of my focus on the customer and listening to what they want and because of listening to my members. We never had a price increase in 12 years, we paid for freight, we did a number of things to help them reduce their costs, and I think we always paid close attention to that.

Now I can bring all of that experience and knowledge here to World Expo and help assist the teams on the other shows, launch new shows and run the consumer event. We're going to branch into new audiences and areas where we haven't before that are outside IT (information technology). World Expo has always been focused on information technology, and now we're going to branch out further and expand the World Expo brand.

Q: Any regrets?

A: I don't know that there's anything I could say that I could see I did wrong. I guess if (I had to choose) one thing, it would be that you've got to prove that return on investment — constantly be in exhibitors' faces and showing them that. Conversely, how do you have someone spend $20 million on a booth and show them that it was worth the money? I don't know that there's an answer to that.

Q: What percentage of your time do you expect to spend on the ESA-sponsored events?

A: Honestly, I don't know. Right now, I'm in at 7 (a.m.) and I'm out at 10:30, 11 at night. It's right now a 60-hour week.

I'm walking into a situation where the prior people working here assembled an excellent team. I'm fortunate in that. And fortunately I have my E³ team here with me. So, we're able to jumpstart and jump into that. My focus will be on launching new events, more so than the day-to-day management of an event.

Q: IDG is partnering with AEG on aspects of the L.A. Live project under construction in downtown Los Angeles. What will be your part of this partnership?

A: We're not at the contract stage yet, but have a verbal agreement. In having a show like the new incarnation consumer event (at L.A. Live) we could set up vertical ramps outside, use the plaza area for a concert and have a gaming league tournament over at Staples Center.

L.A. (Inc.) and the AEG people have just been terrific partners for us. We've had a great relationship in all of the years working on E³. It's been mutually beneficial. I think it's the ideal location.

Q: Why?

A: The demographics for our audience have always shown that Southern California (is the best location), even though there are a large number of developers and gamers up in San Francisco and the Bay Area.

The game business is really about entertainment. When you're in L.A., you have the leading TV stations, radio stations, news outlets, movie studios, celebrities and sports (teams there), and everybody is so closely tied to it. So, when you have Madden NFL or you have an NBA (video) game, all the L.A. Lakers are right there. (Show participants) want to be there and be in that environment. It's an easy crossover for the entertainment business.

Q: Do you play video games?

A: I do. I'm one of the few on my staff that actually does. When I'm traveling, I do it all the time on my phone. But when I'm home, if I can, as a stress release, I love 1080° Snowboarding, and I did just get the (Nintendo) Wii for Christmas, so I plan on using that a lot.

Q: How do you feel about ESA President Doug Lowenstein's Dec. 19 announcement that he will leave the organization early this year?

A: We're all terribly saddened by it. I don't feel that there will be any negative impact ... on the summit and consumer show.

Q: You've said the consumer show name would be chosen by video game enthusiasts. Do you know yet what it will be?

A: We've notified the winner. We just have to wait for him to sign an affidavit.