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I have been pretty active in going to shows (averaging 5 a year) for the last 3 years (started to cut back this year)
I always see the same faces (for the most part not complaining, there are some good looking adult biz people).
There are so many more adult webmasters (affiliates) out there than what is seen posting on any message board. The number of actual affiliates at shows is pretty small.
Most that attend are service providers seeking to meeting up with program owners, program owners to meet with each others, people looking for traffic deals, processors, hosting etc, etc.
Price is a huge consideration for an affiliate webmaster to attend the show, from the registration fee, to the hotel, to the airfare to get there, along with meals and drinks.
Vegas is probably one of the cheapest places to fly to. The hotel was reasonable (assuming you got a room before it was booked up), and the admission was free.
i arrived late on thursday, so i didn't get a chance to get a feel for how many affiliates were there, but I would hope that there was a larger attendance than normal.
Affiliates need to get out to meet with Affiliate Managers, meet with their peers. up and coming programs need to get and learn what others are doing, work on traffic trades, etc.
The long standing joke about the panels, is you hear the same things all of the time. Well, those same topics need to be presented each time, because there are new people coming into the industry and a trade show is a great place to learn stuff.
For panels, maybe have some that are more "advanced" topics, so that those that are experienced might gleem some new insight.
I liked AVN's format of having breakout sessions after a panel, so you can continue the dialogue. It allowed for those in the audience that had experience to chime in, as well as those that were sitting in the seats to speak up for being intimidated in having to walk up to the microphone.
Whoever is running the show, they have their business reasons for structuring their admission fees and sponsorship prices, since they want to make money.
As an observer, I am saying, more people need to be attending the shows, especially the new affiliates and the new program owners for the industry to be able to continually evolve and learn.
If you have been to large mainstream conventions like Ad Tech (which offer free admission), you will see how dull they are, how competitors don't talk to each other, how everyone is in their own groups.
I prefer the adult conventions because you can socialize and talk from an intellectual level all the way down to the "would u hit that" conversations, that you can't get from a message board , email, or ICQ conversations.
The Xbiz show in Vegas, Internext in FL, Phoenix Forum, and Cybernet are great shows because people are some what contained, so you can bump into different people. The Vegas Internext show doesn't contain people (from the previous locations up to the Palms).
The Atlanta Forum is the newcomer and will be interesting to see how it works out (should be cooler in september for Hotlanta).
Being able to contain people, give them a place to hangout (ie. circle bar), have party locations that are close by (not having to bus 45 minutes to get a venue) are some key factors for having a productive show.
Fight the 3 cents!
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