Correct me if I’m wrong. We don’t have any IT business trade show in Hong Kong since the last Asian IT Expo held in 2004. Back then we used to have a couple of IT shows for business community. I guess one of the reasons would be the rise of Internet which opened up more sourcing channels for IT solutions and part of the IT market was merging with the consumer electronics, which also put the leading show like Comdex to sleep.
Comdex, it is still a legendary show in trade show industry. Before the show went dead, the last competing event for Comdex was a show called “Computer Digital Expo, a.k.a. CdXpo, ” created by Alan Meckler. CdXpo didn’t survive for long.
Today Alan Meckler runs Jupitermedia, a company with long history of IT related media businesses. Alan crossed path with Danny Sullivan, the world-renowned search business authority, launched the first trade show about Internet search called “Search Engine Strategies, a.k.a. SES” in 1999. The show was sold to Incisive Media in 2005. Now Danny runs his new show called “Search Marketing Expo, a.k.a. SMX.”
Another US tech event “Webmasterworld PubCon” created by Brett Tabke is pretty wide known in the hardcore geeks community. In PubCon, you meet everyone from Googlers to Spammers. It is a show about the entire Internet industry. 4 years ago I was talking to Brett about co-organizing the show in China. But it was too geeky for China market back then. We didn’t make that happen.
photo source: whatnot
It was quite a paradigm shift in IT industry. Technology becomes more open and move towards the end-users side. The market isn’t just about hardware and software but also gives a significant emphasis on knowledge and application. This sheds light on new development for the future trade shows.
Not only we once believed that exhibitions and conferences could be replaced by interactive web and multimedia technologies, the revolutionizing IT market has completely changed the exhibitors and visitors profile. One now-and-then difference would be: our IT shows used to draw exhibitors like hardware and software vendors and the visitors like corporate MIS and accounting professionals (the white-collar class). Now, the new shows target professionals from marketing, media and communication sectors (the creative class) who come to acquire knowledge and see new things.
We also begin to see some trade shows target new visitor demographics in this region. Some of them were not originally created for this area but gradually evolved and merged with the IT domain. AD-TECH, which will be held next month in Beijing draws a good mix of participants from both marketing and technical fields, is a good example.
The Wikipedia defines trade show,
an exhibition organized so that companies in a specific industry can showcase and demonstrate their new products and services.
I hope the trade show organizers in Hong Kong and China have not buried their vision and passion with Comdex. If we look at how IT means to business today, the successor of Comdex doesn’t necessary to be CES. It can rendered into other good exotic themes.
FYI, there will be the first professional search marketing show called “Search Expo” organized by the Chinese partner of SES, takes place in Hong Kong next month. As far as I know, they’ve got a pretty interesting people mix . To me, the show started almost 4 years late. But still, late is better than none.
Thanks for visiting this weblog. I am a digital marketer based in Hong Kong. After founding a marketing consulting company, merged it with a trade show company, and completed my tenure in 2007, I am blogging my insight and commentary for marketing and entrepreneurial experience. Now I am the Managing Director of 
