2009-03-09 by Derek Vaughan

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Each year there are four web hosting trade shows. Two are vendor sponsored, and two are independent. The two vendor sponsored shows are: the Parallels Hosting Summit, recently held in Las Vegas and the Microsoft Hosting Summit which was held in the past few days at the company's Redmond, Washington headquarters. Clearly, the vendor sponsored shows are designed to benefit the sponsors, and therefore skew towards the exact worldview of the sponsoring vendors. There are also two independent web hosting trade shows each year: HostingCon is held each summer in the United States and WebhostingDay, which is held each spring in Germany. Both HostingCon and WebhostingDay are in their fifth years of operation.

In this current economic climate, however, are trade shows still attracting the numbers of attendees in years past? Why would industry professionals bother to travel long distances to attend trade events? Consider these facts: one of the largest trade shows in the world is the venerable Consumer Electronics Show (CES) held in Las Vegas each year. According to published reports, this year's CES drew 22 percent fewer visitors than last year. The show, which was held in January, attracted 110,000 visitors, down from the 141,150 people who attended last year, and nearly 20,000 less than the 130,000 predicted to attend. Tradeshow Week magazine, the industry publication for trade shows, notes that the recent National. Association of Home Builders’ show (again in Las Vegas) saw show attendance drop 29 percent. Tradeshow week is also reporting that ''the Global Association of the Exhibition Industry found that 62 of show organizers around the world saw their businesses decline in 2008. Nearly 70 percent said they expect at least a 10-percent decrease in revenue in the first half of this year.'' One would presume that web hosting trade shows would suffer through similar declines. If you made that assumption - you would be wrong.

Parallels recently reported that the attendence for its Summit in February (again in Las Vegas) increased dramatically from around 700 attendees in 2009 to over 1,000 in 2009. Serguei Beloussov, CEO of Parallels noted, ''Parallels Summit 2009 is the biggest event in hosting, giving attendees practical insights and providing business opportunities that companies cannot afford to miss in these uncertain times. This is a must-attend event if you are involved in virtualization, SaaS, hosting, or cloud computing.'' While the Microsoft Hosting Summit is just concluding, Martha Bejar, corporate vice president, communications sector described the attendance as ''more than 350 attendees from 38 countries''. It is unclear whether this was above or below expectations. What did the attendees come to see? John Zanni, general manager of the Worldwide Software Plus Services Industry for the Communications Sector at Microsoft posited, ''During these difficult economic times, hosted services are more important than ever as customers look for ways to reduce cost and increase efficiencies. There is a tremendous opportunity for hosting providers to partner with Microsoft to transition from mass-market hosting into higher-margin managed services to deliver compelling new solutions to their customers. Microsoft is making major investments in technology innovation and in its partners to ensure that hosting providers are successful as the industry evolves in response to new competition and economic conditions.''

The next web hosting trade show on the calendar, and the first of the independent shows, is WebhostingDay 2009. This year's event will be held from March 18-20 in the Phantasialand theme park in Bruehl near Cologne, Germany. Show creator and organizer, Thomas Strohe, explained the enthusiasm for this years event, ''we have more than 2.000 registrations so far, already an 80% increase compared to last year. We are getting close to the max capacity of the venue which is approx. 2.300. We will have to shut down registration if we hit that number. So, if someone wants to attend, they should really sign up asap.''

The show itself is nearly sold out, as are the hotel accommodations. According to Mr. Strohe, ''Actually, we have two hotels directly at the park totally sold out and a third hotel 5 minutes from the event center with approximately 20 rooms left. We have sold more than 550 hotel rooms to this day. We have already nearly sold out our backup hotel. When this is sold out there are no more rooms in Bruehl and we will have to check options in downtown Cologne, approximately 25 minutes from the event.''

WebhostingDay is likely attracting a record crowd this year for three main reasons: the strength of the presenters, the proximity to the European audience, and the positive word of mouth coming to fruition after four previous years of success. Here is what one first-time attendee had to say regarding his decision to attend. Phil Robinson is a professional web developer with business hosting company 34SP.com, based in the United Kingdom. Mr. Robinson said, ''The guys here at 34SP.com have always spoken fondly of hosting conferences and seemed to find a great deal of inspiration and energy from their rich content, obviously when they offered to send me to WebhostingDay I accepted. In addition to learning more about German culture and cuisine, I am hoping to meet like-minded industry professionals and gain further insight into the European hosting market.''

Another attendee, originally from Bulgaria is Dimitar Avramov. Mr. Avramov is the creator and current editor of the Daw Web Hosting Blog. Here are Mr. Avramov's comments on WebhostingDay 2009, ''I know WebhostingDay as a premier European web hosting conference. I had thought of going there last year, but wasn't able to make it. I find
the European based (hosting) events exciting, because I meet professionals from different countries, and make myself familiar with different business cultures. When it comes to web hosting, I can say that there are a diversity of web hosting service models in Europe. As a media representative and blogger my expectations are a little bit different than those that other participants might have. Most of them will go to WebhostingDay to do business. I'll be there to cover the event, and to network.''

Mr. Strohe summarized about what is drawing attendees to this year's event, ''We are also happy about the fact that many people from abroad, even from outside of Europe, have registered to join the event. This stresses the international character - and importance - of the event. And a great percentage of the registered attendees come from the CEO or CTO level, which is a sign of the event's high quality regarding both visitors and exhibitors.''

To learn more about WebhostingDay or to register for the 2009 conference, please visit: http://www.webhostingday.com.

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Derek Vaughan

Derek Vaughan is a web hosting industry veteran, marketing consultant and writer. Mr. Vaughan has architected the marketing growth of several prominent web hosting success stories leading to acquisition including Affinity Internet, Inc., Aplus.Net and HostMySite.com . Prior to his entry into the web hosting industry, Mr. Vaughan was responsible for online marketing at The Walt Disney Company where he marketed ecommerce for the ESPN.com and NASCAR.com brands. Mr. Vaughan received his M.B.A. from Vanderbilt University and currently serves on the HostingCon Advisory Board. View Derek Vaughan`s profile for more