Gentle Listers,
 
For the last week or so, I have been following all the diatribe about the
Toronto Interex.  There were some good comments from attendees, many sent
directly to me, others posted to the list.  I very much thank everyone who
made constructive comments.  I very little thank the ones who made silly or
incorrect comments. As an example of tripe, let's take this one:
 
[start of tirade #1]
 
In a message dated 95-08-25 12:57:00 EDT, [log in to unmask] (Larry Boyd)
writes:
 
>This may be the primary missing ingredient with the conferences today.
>There are no local people who want to ensure that every attendee is
>satisfied and will talk about what a great conference they had done.
>
>
 
I have to answer this one directly.
 
Larry, if there had been local people on the committee, they would have
kicked your a** for smoking on the floor in a non-smoking facility. Thank you
for contributing to the problem.
 
My hat is off to you, it takes a special talent to insult a bunch of
volunteer, yet you make it look so easy. From what you are saying, the
conference committee, since it is not a group local to the conference, takes
no pride in the conference.  What you are saying, in effect, is that since
Interex has been handling the conferences through the office and volunteer
conference committees for 8 years now, no one has taken pride in the
conferences for eight years.
 
Don't you ever get tired of being wrong?
 
I was on the Denver committee last year, and everyone on that committee is
damn proud of the job they did.  I was on the Toronto committee and everyone
on the committe is proud of the job they did, and ecstatic with the results
and the attendance. We surmounted many difficulties on this one, not the
least of which was the original chairman stepping down suddenly.  When this
happened, the committee regrouped and carried on!  We also had to deal with
many folks telling us that no one would show up because it was in Canada, how
wrong they were.  I am also on the Anaheim committee (my last year), and we
have already had 2 meetings.
 
[End of tirade #1]
 
 
[start of tirade #2]
 
Steve Cole also chimed in with some, well. . . let us call them exagerations:
 
>The biggest problem I heard from a number of the vendors I talked with was
>that there was not enough time allocated to non-competing vendor time.
>In other shows there has been time allocated so that vendors that help
>support the conference can have at least 1- 2hour time that is not
>competing with talks.  One vendor spent $25K to get 41 leads....he said
>he wouldn't be back after the next one.
 
Talk about not being able to read a schedule, last year we had 1 hour of
non-compete time in the morning and another in the afternoon.  This year we
had the same except for one day which just had one hour of non-compete time.
 As for vendors complaining, all the vendors I talked to, and I talked to a
lot, were VERY happy with the traffic and quality of leads.  As I read the
survey reports of this conference, these vendors have every reason to be
ecstatic.  (I will post some of the survey results at a later time, suffice
it to say that if any vendor is complaining about too few leads, I would
suggest that they look at their offerings.)  Also, a vendor who was present
but did not have a booth, apologized for not having a booth in Toronto and
booked a booth immediately for Anaheim.  The most common comment from the
vendors was that the leads this year were of a high quality and that they
were meeting people they had not encountered before.
 
And how about this other exageration from the same message:
 
>Scheduling and room sizes were major problems.  Several roundtables
>overflowed their scheduled rooms and major roundtables were
>scheduled in direct competition with each other.
 
>In particular the MPE Technical Roundtable and SIG/IMAGE, both very
>popular to MPE Users were scheduled at the same time.  This is
>particularly disappointing when CSY usually has about 20 lab engineers
>available at the MPE Roundtable to talk to customers about their
>concerns and problems.  HP and CSY voiced major concerns about
>the scheduling issues and Interex's lack of support for them with their
>demonstrated support for Interex.  I would hate to see the HP presentations
>go back to marketing oriented and lose the technical aspects.
 
I have already mentionned the ever present problem of scheduling 2-hour
events.  There are only 6 slots for the entire week.  Nobody wants their SIGs
or Roundtables at the beginning of the week, which further compounds the
problem.  Next year we may decide that no SIGs will take place during the
day.
 
As for overflowing rooms, yes there were some, not nearly as many as the
message would suggest, and guess what? One has to work with what one has.
 
As for that last comment about HP having major concerns and threatening to
not come to a conference, well. . . let's just say that I KNOW that is wrong.
 
[end of tirade #2]
 
 
Various Notes on Toronto and the comments:
 
Many people brought up the smoking.  Yes, I did try to deal with it during
the show. It was difficult to get the union folks to stop and some vendors
got into the act too, (thanks Larry). Once the announcement was made over the
loudspeakers, the smoking abbated but some union folks were still smoking.  I
chased down the union management and threatened them with all sorts of stuff.
 They said that they would address it and they did.  However some vendors
still smoked and I asked them to stop. I got a snide remark from only one of
them (no, it was not Larry).
 
What can I say about the party?  It would have happened to any committee
whether local or Interex.  800 extra people will overload the best planned
logistics.  In this case it represented a 40% increase in attendance.  Next
year we will have to control the entrance or something.
 
I only heard from a few people on the list about the overall program
contents, this means 1 of 3 things: a) the program was so good that you can't
critisize it, b) None of you attended any presentations, or c) you do not go
to the conference for the program, you only go to the parties or the vendor
show.
 
We made many changes to the conference in an effort to offer a better one to
the attendees.  It seems to have worked, the Toronto conference had the
highest paid registration than any other Interex conference, a lot of the
sessions were very well attended and we had some overflow at a few sessions.
 
Our contention that attendees want hands-on sessions and tutorials was
correct (that was easy, survey after survey told us that). These sessions
were the highest attended as a category. Next year, we will have even more
tutorials and hands-on sessions.
 
Everything that talked IMAGE/SQL, HP-UX 10.0 and Internet were hits.  The
client-server roundtable on Friday morning was well attended.
 
How about the fact that we had a few rooms wired to the network during the
week?  I did not hear any of you mention anything about it.  I thought
attendees enjoyed seeing live demos and live exercises on the big screens.
 How about the capabilities of showing live demos during the c/s roundtable.
 That was a first.  Even though we only used it for a few minutes, I predict
that within a few years, laptops connected to the main screen will be de
rigueur.  We could have handled 8 laptops at that session. I thought the
whole connectivity thing was a great idea but it required a lot of work.  We
will do this again next year.
 
As always, HP's participation was exemplary.  Their booth was great and
always busy, the solution center had over 2,500 people go through it and the
HP3000 classes were extremely well attended.  They were in the sessions, the
roundtables and the SIGs. BTW, I bet none of you knew that this past year we
had folks from CSY and GSY in attendance during the planning sessions. That
was another first.
 
The management symposium at the beginning of the week, (where it will remain)
had 4 times as many people has we had originally planned.  Thankfully, we had
a great auditorium on site, where we relocated the event.  The reviews were
very positive.
 
Larry, even though I am not local to Toronto, I take great pride in the
conference, we had a lot of firsts and they all went very well.  The entire
committee takes great pride in the conference.  What you do not understand,
probably because you have never done anything like this, is that there is a
lot of work involved in making the whole thing look easy. If the only things
the folks could critisize are the smoking, the overflow crowds at the party
and the noise level at the mixer, then we, as a committee have done a great
job.
 
Kind regards,
 
Denys (very tired, but very proud of the conference) Beauchemin. . .