Monday, March 28, 2005 | 10:41 a.m.
The organizers of Comdex, a computer trade show that once was the largest convention to visit Las Vegas, have removed the show from their calendar and are producing a Comdex show in Greece during the November dates normally reserved at the Las Vegas Convention Center.
MediaLive International Inc., the producer of Comdex, will continue to offer its Networld + Interop technology show in Las Vegas, scheduled this year at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center May 1-6. The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority estimated 27,500 people would attend the show and has calendared the event for May 2006 as well.
LVCVA officials said the Comdex mid-November show dates have been reserved, but since there has been no confirmation from organizers, the convention sales force is offering the space to other meetings. The LVCVA has taken Comdex off its own convention calendar.
Meanwhile, a new technology show focusing on telecommunications and Voice-over Internet Protocol is planned at the new Rio conference center Nov. 14-16. The new event, sponsored by Pulver.com, CMP Media and the Telecommunications Industry Association, will be called IP-4-IT 2005.
Show organizers say they expect 3,000 people to attend the inaugural event.
San Francisco-based MediaLive International could not be reached for comment on the status of the Comdex show in Las Vegas, but the company's event calendar on its Internet site has no reference to the event. Instead, the company is planning Comdex Greece 2005 Nov. 18-20 at the Expo Athens Exhibition Center in Athens.
Show organizers surprised local meetings industry professionals in June when they abruptly canceled Comdex 2004. At the time of the announcement, MediaLive called the move a postponement, saying the show would return to Las Vegas in November 2005.
Comdex critics said they didn't expect the show ever to return, noting that no tech show that has been postponed has ever been able to rebound.
Comdex, created by Sheldon Adelson, whose company owns the Venetian and the Sands Expo Center, first opened in Las Vegas in 1979. As the technology industry grew, the show blossomed into one of the city's largest events and Adelson sold it to a Japanese company and used some of his profits to leverage the loans that built the Venetian.
By 1997, Comdex drew more than 225,000 people to the city and the trade show floor covered a record 1.475 million square feet at the Convention Center, the Sands Expo Center and in tents erected in their respective parking lots.
But when the industry began a downturn and post-9/11 travel worries put a dent in attendance, the show's popularity waned. Attendance estimates ranged from 100,000 to 125,000 in 2001 and from 75,000 to 100,000 in 2002.
The poor showing in 2002 resulted in the show's fourth owner, Key3Media Inc., filing for bankruptcy protection. Although the company emerged from bankruptcy four months after filing, the 2003 show was even worse than the year before, with attendance estimated at between 40,000 and 50,000 people. But organizers said there were more quality buyers than "tire-kickers" attending the show.
Some technology experts said Comdex's failures could be blamed on poor show management while others said the industry was more interested in narrowly focused events. The International Consumer Electronics Show is an exception because it has a retail audience and is not geared to industry professionals.
Narrowly focused shows -- such as Networld + Interop, which has an audience of computer networking leaders -- are expected to continued to draw good crowds.
The new IP-4-IT event at the Rio will focus on using the Internet for telecommunications. The show is expecting more than 125 exhibitors, including vendors for messaging and voice mail products, Internet conferencing, network management and security.
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