{"id":272,"date":"2011-02-10T07:14:44","date_gmt":"2011-02-10T15:14:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/?p=272"},"modified":"2011-02-08T20:35:42","modified_gmt":"2011-02-09T04:35:42","slug":"upstairsdownstairs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/2011\/02\/10\/upstairsdownstairs\/","title":{"rendered":"upstairs, downstairs: thoughts on Macworld Expo"},"content":{"rendered":"

I checked out Macworld Expo this year. \u00a0I’ve gone every year since 20061<\/a><\/sup>, and I’ve always had a great time. But, speaking as someone who only got to check out the Expo and not the Conference, I just didn’t find Macworld to be a great event. \u00a0I was predisposed to loving it, and I couldn’t this year. \u00a0Based on some of the other articles I’ve read and conversations that I’ve had with others who attended this year, I think it’s an upstairs\/downstairs<\/a> issue.<\/p>\n

Looking at the session list for the Conference portion of Macworld<\/a>, it was awesome. \u00a0The Conference is broken into several tracks. \u00a0The Users Conference has fantastic sessions. \u00a0There were 6 Mac tracks and 2 iOS tracks. \u00a0The Mac part\u00a0includes sessions, both beginner and advanced, across productivity, photography, and business. \u00a0The MacIT track is my favourite, but then I’m a geek. \u00a0That part of Macworld 2011 looked like it was just as great as it’s always been.<\/p>\n

The Conference is, both literally and figuratively, upstairs. \u00a0This year, it was held on the second and third floors of Moscone West. \u00a0By all accounts, it was spacious and comfortable. \u00a0There was plenty of seating for the all-important hallway discussions. \u00a0Contrast that to the downstairs of the Expo.<\/p>\n

The Expo is totally different now that Apple has left the building. \u00a0There are fewer companies represented there. \u00a0While some people have been joking for several years that the Expo had just been about iPod\/iPhone cases, there were still lots of Mac developers there. \u00a0Even better, the booths were usually staffed by their technical team, so spending time in their booth was very productive. \u00a0As someone from an application team working in a booth myself, I really appreciated the opportunity to talk to the users of my applications, get feedback from them, and help them out with problems. \u00a0As a Mac user myself, I loved being able to talk to the developers of some of my favourite applications. \u00a0Sometimes this was giving them feedback, sometimes it was to request a feature, and sometimes it was simply to tell them that I love their apps.<\/p>\n

With Apple being gone and many of the big players deciding to sit this one out, it left room for a lot of small players. \u00a0And a lot of these small players were in iOS development and accessories. \u00a0It was weird to see Thinkpads and Vaios on the show floor. \u00a0I’m an iPhone and iPad user too, but it’s still called Macworld. \u00a0I wanted much more Mac and much less iOS.<\/p>\n

There were lots of tiny booths. \u00a0This meant that it was a good opportunity to meet some of the smaller vendors (albeit with the caveat that many of them were iOS vendors that I wasn’t as interested in), but it created a traffic jam in the aisles. \u00a0Moving through the aisles was bloody well nearly impossible. \u00a0Since the vast majority of booths were very small booths, no-one other than the booth workers could actually be in the booth. \u00a0To stop and see what was going on in a booth required that you stop in the aisle, which blocked everyone else from moving past. \u00a0This was even worse in the teensy four-sided kiosks that took up one corner of the show floor. \u00a0There were things in there that I wanted to check out, but the teeming crowds in that section made it too much of a hassle to go in and talk to developers.<\/p>\n

Adding to the problems on the show floor was that there wasn’t anywhere to hang out with friends for those of us who were only downstairs. \u00a0A large part of Macworld, for me, is the networking aspect of it — that so-called hallway track. \u00a0At previous Macworlds, I got to see lots of my existing Macworld friends and make more of them. \u00a0This year, there were only a handful of tables at the back of the hall, which were generally taken up by people eating. \u00a0With the aisles full, there was no place to move to the side and talk. \u00a0The lobby only had a few chairs near the coffee cart. \u00a0There was no place to hang out, and no place to stand within a booth. \u00a0As a result, I lost most of the serendipity of meeting someone new. \u00a0I also didn’t run into old friends unless I had arranged something ahead of time, which further cut the networking aspect of it.<\/p>\n

This year as someone who only got to spend time on the Expo floor, Macworld just felt like a non-event to me. \u00a0I know that part of it is that I didn’t get to spend as much time there as I have in the past2<\/a><\/sup>, but I also think that part of it is how the show evolved this year.<\/p>\n

There’s a disconnect between the Expo and the Conference. \u00a0The Conference upstairs still is Macworld. \u00a0Having some iOS tracks in there makes sense, but the focus is on the Mac. \u00a0The Expo downstairs isn’t Macworld any longer. \u00a0The Expo is Appleworld — and I’m only calling it Appleworld because iOSworld sounds pretty lame. \u00a0There were still a few Mac developers on the floor, but even most of those were often showing off their latest iOS applications in addition to their Mac offerings. \u00a0The rest is all about iOS.<\/p>\n

I can see why most of the Mac developers chose not to get floor space this year3<\/a><\/sup> \u00a0With an Expo that has become increasingly focused on iOS in previous years, taking part in the Expo is a big cost that has a questionable payoff. \u00a0There’s the cost associated with the booth: renting the floor space on the show floor, as well as putting together the booth. \u00a0These things are Not Cheap, especially for a big professional booth. \u00a0More importantly, there’s the cost to the engineering team. \u00a0As I mentioned above, most developers sent members of their technical team. \u00a0As a result, those developers lost a week of productivity. \u00a0This is worthwhile if there’s a benefit to the developer as well as to the community. \u00a0But without a critical mass of Mac users who are interested in discussing Mac software, there’s a much smaller benefit to the development team, not to mention only a small benefit to the Mac community.<\/p>\n

I think that the disconnect between the Conference and the Expo has to be addressed. \u00a0I’m not sure what the best way is to accomplish this. \u00a0I hope that it can be done.<\/p>\n

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  1. Which makes me a relative noob, I know. ↩<\/a><\/span><\/li>\n
  2. Such as for the Office 2008 launch, where I got a hotel room at the W for the entire week instead of making the long trek home to Mountain View every night ↩<\/a><\/span><\/li>\n
  3. It must be said that I have no inside knowledge of why either my current<\/a> or my former<\/a> employer didn’t have a booth at Macworld this year. \u00a0This is only my opinion, not a representation of anyone’s decision-making process. ↩<\/a><\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    I checked out Macworld Expo this year. \u00a0I’ve gone every year since 20061, and I’ve always had a great time. But, speaking as someone who only got to check out the Expo and not the Conference, I just didn’t find Macworld to be a great event. \u00a0I was predisposed to loving it, and I couldn’t … Continue reading upstairs, downstairs: thoughts on Macworld Expo<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-272","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mwsf"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=272"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":276,"href":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272\/revisions\/276"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}