NEW YORK (CNN/Money) -
During the tech boom, it seemed like there was always a hot tech conference to attend, some with Bacchanalian events that attracted thousands of people.
But no longer. And the two companies that host tech conferences are reeling as a result.
Penton Media, which publishes Internet World magazine and runs a series of conferences with the Internet World brand name, trades for just 43 cents a share. That's a far cry from nearly $27 three years ago. In a bid to raise its stock price and avoid delisting, Penton (PME: Research, Estimates) proposed a 1-for-3 reverse stock split last month.
This year, Penton is producing just two Internet World conferences in the United States: a spring event in San Jose, Calif., last month and a fall conference slated for New York in December. The summer conference in Chicago and two wireless conferences, alas, are no more.
In addition, Penton moved the spring conference from Los Angeles, where it had been held since 1997, to a smaller venue in San Jose. Marit Hanson, director of sales and marketing for the San Jose Convention Center, said the Internet World spring show typically would attract 25,000 to 30,000 attendees, even when it was hosted at the smaller San Jose site for much of the 1990s.
But this year, fewer than 2,000 showed up, according to Hanson. And that's despite the fact that the Internet World conference was combined with another event, Streaming Media West. The two used to be separate shows.
Carl Pugh, president of Penton Media's technology events group, said the company has not ruled out cutting back to just one Internet World show if the market does not improve. But for now, the fall show is on.
The news is even worse for another tech conference organizer, Key3Media Group, which filed for bankruptcy protection from creditors in February. Key3Media runs the Comdex conference as well as NetWorld + Interop, a networking conference being held in Las Vegas this week.
Rob Powers, spokesman for the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, said that attendance at NetWorld + Interop is lower than last year. Key3Media did not return calls seeking comment.
Key3Media (KMEDQ: Research, Estimates) now trades on the OTC Bulletin Board for less than a penny a share. Its peak price was about $13 a share in March 2001.
Still, some tech conferences are doing well. Powers said the Consumer Electronics Show, held in Las Vegas in January, was expecting 100,000 people and wound up with 117,000.
Conferences focusing on smaller niches in tech also are doing well. Hanson said the San Jose Convention Center recently hosted the Game Developers Conference, which had 15,500 attendees, up 55 percent from a year ago.
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And one company is so undeterred by the poor environment that it is trying to steal Comdex's thunder. JupiterMedia (JUPM: Research, Estimates) has scheduled a conference called Computer Digital Expo for November 17-21, the same time as Comdex. It is even planning on hosting it in Las Vegas, where Comdex will be held.
Approximately 125,000 people attended Comdex last year, the same as in 2001 but down from the peak of 211,000 in 2000. And only about 1,100 companies bought space at the show last year, down from 1,685 in 2001 and 2,337 in 2000, according to figures provided by Key3Media before the show.
Stewart Quealy, conference director for JupiterMedia, said his firm hopes to be an alternative to Comdex with a stronger focus on hot niche areas like wireless networking and instant messaging. The company has been successful with smaller conferences dedicated to these areas, Quealy said. The company is expected to post a profit of 2 cents a share this year, according to analysts surveyed by First Call, so it is in better shape financially than Penton or Key3Media.
Still, is launching another tech show wise in this environment? The main problem with events like Comdex and Internet World seems fairly simple: The bubble has burst. Lots of tech upstarts have gone out of business and there's nothing overly exciting going on, no next big thing.
Penton Media's Pugh said there is only so much that tech conference organizers can do except wait for a turnaround in the sector. After all, nobody wants to go to a conference when there isn't much to celebrate, and potential exhibitors have been cautious about where they put their dollars.
"Trade shows are less fun now," Pugh said. "Tech companies are cutting back on parties and the reality is that many are operating in triage mode."
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