Even slimmed down, Comdex still champion of tech shows

Kevin Rademacher

Tuesday, Nov. 18, 2003 | 10:54 a.m.

By 11 a.m. on Monday, John Kleweis was losing his voice.

The senior account manager for FilterLogix, a spam-blocking software company, was working the crowded floor at Comdex, and a sore throat was coming on faster than the rush of customers pelting him with questions.

"That's a good sign," he said.

Kleweis said the Carrollton, Texas-based company was concerned with projections for a smaller convention crowd at Comdex. The 50,000 attendees that convention organizers expect this year is well off the pace of 200,000 that showed up in 2000.

If the first hour of exhibit hall traffic was any indication, Kleweis said Comdex will be a success this year.

"On Yahoo! today they said it would be a slimmed down show, but we have been surprised," he said. "It looks packed in here. I think it's going to be better than people expected."

Mitch Brown, a technical support specialist with Videx, has been making the trip to Comdex for 20 years. The Corvallis, Ore.-based company was making color display boards for Apple Computer Inc.'s first machines. Once the company switched to the Macintosh platform, Videx had to find a new line of work and shifted to manufacturing bar-code readers. Since 2000, Videx has been pitching electronic locks in an era where security is at a premium.

Like Videx, Brown said, Comdex is changing with the market.

"It's a lot smaller this year," he said. "You've got to roll with the punches."

Videx will examine the success of the show over the next few weeks and determine whether to return next year, Brown said.

"We're going to see how the show goes," he said. "The fact that it's a little smaller, for a small company like us, could be good."

In past years of Comdex marked by endless exhibitors and technology giants, it was harder for smaller vendors to get noticed, Brown said.

One factor that has not worried Comdex participants is the rival cdXpo, which set up shop across town at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center. Brown said he had heard another show was in town, but getting information about it was difficult.

"The taxi drivers didn't even know about it," he said.

John Scroggs, a communications specialist at Texas A&M University, is attending his second Comdex convention this year. He said he didn't know there was another show in town until he saw it on the news Monday morning.

"I had no idea," he said.

"If we are down there, we might check it out," said Scroggs' colleague, Paul Robles, a network administrator from Texas A&M.

The pair said they were looking for information on network management, Spam blocking software and anti-virus software.

"This is still the show," Scroggs said.

Alfredo Lyma Young, from Panama City, Panama, is making his first trip to Comdex. The senior partner in the website development company TecWebComputer S.A. said Comdex is unmatched when it comes to reputation.

"Comdex is still the place to be," he said, adding that the show delivered with plenty of booths and seminar sessions on wireless technology and security.

"It's been great so far," he said, adding that fewer companies of higher quality could make the show better.

"It's not quantity, it's quality," he said.

Lyma Young also said he had never heard of cdXpo, and had no plans to attend.

Roger Johnston, vice president of the British-based company Meridio Ltd., said Comdex also capitalizes on its relationship with the biggest of the software giants -- Microsoft Corp.

Meridio is exhibiting at Comdex for the first time as a Microsoft partner, and Johnston said business was booming in the first hour of the show.

"Purely being associated with Microsoft has probably given us double the traffic," he said. "We've had half a dozen worthy leads in the first half hour."

Like other exhibitors and attendees, Johnston said the smaller crowd appears to be higher quality.

"We are hoping that it's actually a better concentration of decision makers," he said. "That's our hope anyway, and it certainly looks good so far."