Speaker 1: Get in tech with technology with tech Stuff from how
Speaker 1: stuff dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, senior writer Jonathan Strickland from how Stuff
Speaker 1: works dot Com. I am still recovering from a cold,
Speaker 1: but every day I'm getting a little bit better, so
Speaker 1: I'll probably only get super raspy. I don't know a
Speaker 1: dozen times in this episode, and today's topic comes to
Speaker 1: us courtesy of a little listener mail. This message is
Speaker 1: from Alex, and Alex said, I really enjoy listening to
Speaker 1: your episodes on c e S and also listening to
Speaker 1: the shows that you broadcast every year from CS and
Speaker 1: it got me to thinking about two decades ago, there
Speaker 1: was a popular trade show called Calm Dex, which is
Speaker 1: not around anymore. I've always wondered what happened to Comdex
Speaker 1: and why it failed as a trade show. I know
Speaker 1: that some famous things happened at Colm Deck. The blue
Speaker 1: screen of death coming up on Bill Gates during a
Speaker 1: Windows demonstration comes to mind. Thanks for making such a
Speaker 1: great show. Well, thank you Alex for those kind words
Speaker 1: and for the suggestion. Guys, remember you can always write
Speaker 1: me to make suggestions for show topics or guests. I
Speaker 1: should have on the show, or even if you just
Speaker 1: want to say hi. The email address you can use
Speaker 1: is tech stuff at house stuffworks dot com. I'll mention
Speaker 1: that again at the end of the show, but I
Speaker 1: know some of you tune out before I get to that,
Speaker 1: So that's what you can use as an email if
Speaker 1: you want to get in touch with me. Now, let's
Speaker 1: talk about Condex and its impact on the text industry.
Speaker 1: I can't just jump right onto Condex though, I actually
Speaker 1: have to go back a little bit, and and I
Speaker 1: also have to admit this was a surprisingly challenging topic.
Speaker 1: There's not a whole lot written about Condex as a whole,
Speaker 1: apart from some articles in computer industry magazines from the
Speaker 1: time that usually focused on either an upcoming show, like
Speaker 1: you know, you might read an article in a magazine
Speaker 1: from seven about Condex eighty seven being around the corner,
Speaker 1: or you might see an article that is talking about
Speaker 1: just a show that just ended. Kind of similar to
Speaker 1: how people cover c e s right, there will be
Speaker 1: an article that says, oh, hey, CS is over here,
Speaker 1: what the big trends were, But you don't really find
Speaker 1: a whole lot of stuff about the life and death
Speaker 1: of the show as a whole. You have to find
Speaker 1: bits and pieces and then end up putting it all
Speaker 1: together and forming it into a meaningful narrative. So this
Speaker 1: episode is really the result of hours of research. I
Speaker 1: had to piece everything together myself. So typically for every
Speaker 1: hour of podcasts that I produce, it takes about eight
Speaker 1: hours of research. That's typical. This one was way more
Speaker 1: than that. It had to be at least twenty hours
Speaker 1: of research, maybe more in order to get all of this.
Speaker 1: But that's enough stalling. Let's talk about condex. Uh. So,
Speaker 1: back in nineteen seventy, which is, by the way, many
Speaker 1: years before Condex actually officially began, there was a group
Speaker 1: of entrepreneurs based out of Needham, Massachusetts, and they included
Speaker 1: Robert Bob Lively and Milton Burns, and they created a
Speaker 1: magazine covering the world of computers and data communications. And
Speaker 1: the name of that publication was the Data com User,
Speaker 1: and data com was one word and two ms at
Speaker 1: the end of calm. Uh This was before the era
Speaker 1: of the personal computer. It was even before the era
Speaker 1: that you would be able to purchase a kit and
Speaker 1: make your own personal computer. This was the era of
Speaker 1: many computers and micro computers that were only meant for
Speaker 1: business or research purposes, so you didn't really see them
Speaker 1: in the home. But they were able to create a
Speaker 1: successful magazine, and two years after they launched it, the
Speaker 1: publishers partnered with a a different person of future casino
Speaker 1: magnate Sheldon Gary Addlson to launch a new trade show
Speaker 1: that they were calling the Interface Conference and Exposition. Now
Speaker 1: Edelson is or Addlson is an interesting person, someone of
Speaker 1: great influence both in Las Vegas and in politics. He
Speaker 1: would eventually go on to build one of the premium
Speaker 1: casinos on the Strip, the Venetian. Anyway, after several successful
Speaker 1: years of running the Interface Conference and Exposition, the group
Speaker 1: saw another opportunity. So it's nineteen seventy nine. The computer
Speaker 1: industry was starting to gain some traction, with the home
Speaker 1: PC market mostly stuck in the world of hobbyists and
Speaker 1: early adopters. By seventy nine, it was starting to slowly
Speaker 1: emerge from that market, but it wasn't yet to the
Speaker 1: point where computers were becoming household objects. Uh. It was
Speaker 1: fairly rare to run into homes that had one. They
Speaker 1: were expensive, and there just weren't a whole lot out there.
Speaker 1: You're talking about early Apple computers. You're talking about the
Speaker 1: Commodore sixty four, the Tandy, that kind of stuff. More companies, though,
Speaker 1: we're really looking into incorporating computers into the workplace. So
Speaker 1: the Interface Group organized a new event, and this was
Speaker 1: called the Computer Dealers Exhibition, which was later shortened to
Speaker 1: the name Comdex. Now, that nineteen show was modest by
Speaker 1: later standards, and modest is kind of overstating it. It
Speaker 1: was tiny compared to the show when it reached its peak.
Speaker 1: It took place in the MGM Grand in Las Vegas,
Speaker 1: and that was the MGM Grand at the time. The
Speaker 1: MGM Grand of today is not the same building as
Speaker 1: the one from nineteen two, totally different places. Approximately four
Speaker 1: thousand people attended the show, with about a hundred fifty
Speaker 1: seven exhibitors present. Now, in those days only industry representatives
Speaker 1: could attend, so you had to be inside the computer
Speaker 1: industry in order to uh to be considered for attendance,
Speaker 1: so general public was not allowed to go into the show.
Speaker 1: It's very similar to the way C E S is run,
Speaker 1: and for many years E three ran that way. Although
Speaker 1: E three seen which is you know, we're I'm recording
Speaker 1: this in seventeen is the first time in several years
Speaker 1: that the show is going to be open to the
Speaker 1: general public um, assuming that you were able to get
Speaker 1: a badge in time. I'm gonna be at E three
Speaker 1: this year, so that will be interesting. I can't wait
Speaker 1: to see how it's different from the years past that
Speaker 1: I have attended when it was industry only anyway, context
Speaker 1: when it started only allowed industry members and and it
Speaker 1: really didn't look at any of the personal computer stuff
Speaker 1: at all because it end that was such a young market.
Speaker 1: It was really looking at the business applications for computers.
Speaker 1: So if you visit Las Vegas and you go to
Speaker 1: the MGM Grand, like I said, that's not the same
Speaker 1: casino as the one that hosted the first Condex. If
Speaker 1: you want to visit the building where the first Condex
Speaker 1: took place, you actually have to go to Bally's because
Speaker 1: that's what the old MGM Grand turned into. So I'll
Speaker 1: walk through Bally's. Casino is also a walk through computer
Speaker 1: history in a way, and they really did focus on
Speaker 1: many computers which were named Many, but we're honestly pretty
Speaker 1: huge machines to to be fair, the original computers that
Speaker 1: came out. Those were the ones that took up like
Speaker 1: an entire room or sometimes the floor of a building like.
Speaker 1: They were huge, huge machines. Those first computers, the ones
Speaker 1: that date all the way back to like the forties
Speaker 1: and fifties, But the many computers of the seventies were
Speaker 1: still pretty massive machines. And again they were meant for
Speaker 1: corporate use or manufacturing or things like that. They weren't
Speaker 1: meant to be on your table at home. Um so
Speaker 1: their industrial computers. Almost all the interactions at CONDEX were
Speaker 1: all about business to business, with computer manufacturers courting big
Speaker 1: corporations like insurance companies and law firms. So really, if
Speaker 1: you might represent, say a computer manufacturer, and what you're
Speaker 1: trying to do is get that representative from that big
Speaker 1: insurance company to come see your stuff and say, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know what, I'm going to put in an order
Speaker 1: for X number of machines for us to use at
Speaker 1: our corporate office. That was kind of the purpose for CONDEX.
Speaker 1: Uh So it wasn't the sort of convention that the
Speaker 1: average computer junkie would even want to attend that first COMDEX.
Speaker 1: If you're a big computer nerd, you probably still would
Speaker 1: not be too keen on that first Condex because it
Speaker 1: just it was geared towards a different type of person.
Speaker 1: It's more for business now. Exhibitors also attended shows like
Speaker 1: Condex for another reason, not just to connect with potential customers,
Speaker 1: They also wanted to see what the competition was up to.
Speaker 1: Keep in mind, these trade shows allowed companies to show
Speaker 1: off stuff that was in development, stuff that had not
Speaker 1: yet hit the market. That meant that if you were
Speaker 1: a competitor, you might get a look at someone's products
Speaker 1: before they actually hit store shelves, and if you are able,
Speaker 1: you might be able to suss out how those products
Speaker 1: are working and figure out your own version of that
Speaker 1: same product. It's not quite the same thing as copying
Speaker 1: someone else. It might involve some reverse engineering a little
Speaker 1: ethically questionable, but it's certainly was something that happened all
Speaker 1: the time. If a competitor's computers incorporated a new feature
Speaker 1: that you saw customers were really finding to be compelling,
Speaker 1: you might go back to your team and say, hey,
Speaker 1: competitor X has this new peripheral and people are going
Speaker 1: gaga over it. We've got to create something equal to
Speaker 1: or better than that for our products. So it's really
Speaker 1: just a fuel for competition. And just like ce S
Speaker 1: gives rise to certain trends each year, so did CONDEX.
Speaker 1: So another reason why companies would attend is to see
Speaker 1: what trends are starting to come up and should there
Speaker 1: be uh, some that that the company needs to get
Speaker 1: involved in, they could end up dedicating some resources to
Speaker 1: it and then become a player in that space. The
Speaker 1: worst thing in the world would be to be left
Speaker 1: behind and become obsolete and see your company's business failed
Speaker 1: because you weren't able to capitalize on an emerging trend.
Speaker 1: So some companies would send people out there just to see,
Speaker 1: all right, well what's big this year and what do
Speaker 1: we need to pay attention to? So it really was
Speaker 1: all about business now. The event was was a success,
Speaker 1: and the group planned a second event for nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: and this one took place in the Las Vegas Convention Center.
Speaker 1: It had outgrown the MGM Grand, but a few attendees
Speaker 1: were staying at the MGM Grand. That's you know, just
Speaker 1: that was the place where they had booked a room, uh,
Speaker 1: but the show had already outgrown the conference rooms there.
Speaker 1: The new venue boasted twenty five thousand square feet of
Speaker 1: exhibition space and more than seven thousand people attended the show,
Speaker 1: so they nearly doubled in size. Now, that was the
Speaker 1: first year for the show to use Comdex as a name,
Speaker 1: and it was also a tragic year. Uh, something really
Speaker 1: disastrous happened that year. On the very last day of
Speaker 1: the Comdex conference, a fire broke out in the MGM
Speaker 1: Grand overnight and it was a serious fire, and more
Speaker 1: than eighty people died, most of them from smoke inhalation
Speaker 1: because the smoke went up into the rooms and a
Speaker 1: lot of people were asleep and they never woke up.
Speaker 1: Out of those eight people, eight of them were attending Comdex,
Speaker 1: and the tragedy marks the worst disaster in Nevada history
Speaker 1: and the third worst hotel fire in US history. The
Speaker 1: cause of the fire was ultimately traced to an electrical
Speaker 1: ground fault in a wall socket. They had a nearby
Speaker 1: cooling unit for a pastry display case that had a
Speaker 1: pair of copper pipes that were exposed that the insulation
Speaker 1: had worn down. The copper pipes had been vibrating at times,
Speaker 1: and that vibration had caused the pipes to rub together
Speaker 1: and the insulation protecting the pipes worn away, which meant
Speaker 1: that they could rub against each other, and this eventually
Speaker 1: caused the short, the electrical short, which then caused a fire.
Speaker 1: The fire spread very quickly and it was a huge
Speaker 1: story both in Las Vegas and in the computer industry. Now,
Speaker 1: despite this tragedy, the conference continued and grew. UH I
Speaker 1: was on that last day of the conference. The following
Speaker 1: year it was even bigger. You would actually see Condex
Speaker 1: expanded two shows in that year. So in the springtime
Speaker 1: they the organization launched a Comdex show in New York.
Speaker 1: The fall show stayed in Las Vegas. So they were
Speaker 1: splitting up uh to two shows a year, with one
Speaker 1: on the East Coast and one in Las Vegas. UH.
Speaker 1: The New York show was a big success. Um. It
Speaker 1: was more than twice as big as the first Condex
Speaker 1: show in Vegas. Had eleven thousand attendees and two thirty
Speaker 1: seven exhibitors. That Vegas show happened in the fall, and
Speaker 1: this was huge business, not just for the exhibitors and
Speaker 1: the attending professionals, but also for the organizers themselves. They
Speaker 1: were making a huge amount of profit. At its peak,
Speaker 1: Condex could command fifty nine dollars per square foot of
Speaker 1: exhibit space, and when it was the biggest trade show around,
Speaker 1: there was more than one point three million square feet available,
Speaker 1: and CONDEX staffers were really really pushing for companies to
Speaker 1: end up leasing that space, so they were making buckos
Speaker 1: of dollars serious cash just so they a company can
Speaker 1: rent some carpeted floor. Um. Yeah, if you want to
Speaker 1: read some vitriol about CONDEX, just do some searches about
Speaker 1: how much money the organizers were making back in these days,
Speaker 1: and and how a lot of the exhibitors felt that
Speaker 1: they were being almost like extorted in order to rent
Speaker 1: larger and larger spaces year over year, like they were
Speaker 1: being pressured by staffers who were acting like sale osman
Speaker 1: to rent more space each successful year. Um. It's one
Speaker 1: of the reasons why some companies said that they ultimately
Speaker 1: abandoned the show. Well, back in the show was still
Speaker 1: growing just as the computer industry was growing and holding
Speaker 1: two shows ended up working out with the Spring Show
Speaker 1: in New York and the Fall Show in Las Vegas.
Speaker 1: So in nineteen eight two they expanded again and this
Speaker 1: time there were three shows. The Spring event occurred in
Speaker 1: Atlantic City, aka the Las Vegas of the East Coast,
Speaker 1: and the Fall show happened in Las Vegas, but there
Speaker 1: was a third show that happened in Europe and it
Speaker 1: took place in Amsterdam. That marked the beginning of Condex
Speaker 1: expanding beyond the United States. Now that trend would continue
Speaker 1: and snowball over the following years. So you start looking
Speaker 1: at the number of shows Condex was holding year over year,
Speaker 1: and it kept on increasing. In two thousand two, there
Speaker 1: were eighteen comdat shows scheduled throughout that year, eighteen different
Speaker 1: events across the globe in two thousand two. Now, one
Speaker 1: of those, the one that was scheduled for Mexico City,
Speaker 1: ended up getting canceled, but that still means there were
Speaker 1: seventeen shows in two thousand two. I mean that's think
Speaker 1: about how how many resources you would have to dedicate
Speaker 1: to hold those that many events around the world. Alright,
Speaker 1: but back to the nineteen eighties, So after those first
Speaker 1: few years when everyone was concentrating on many computers and
Speaker 1: business to business type stuff, personal computers began to play
Speaker 1: a role in shows because they were starting to take off.
Speaker 1: People were starting to purchase personal computers at a larger rate.
Speaker 1: It was going beyond the hobbyists and beyond the early adopter,
Speaker 1: and so it became part of comdex history. He started
Speaker 1: seeing computers like the Apple to e and the first
Speaker 1: IBM compatible computers. First you saw the IBM computers, and
Speaker 1: then wordly after that you saw the IBM clones that
Speaker 1: we're making their way to market. And you also had
Speaker 1: other computers like the Commodore sixty four, the Tandy computer,
Speaker 1: and the Amiga line of computers which originally came from
Speaker 1: Commodore as well. And one of these days I'm gonna
Speaker 1: have to do a full show about Tandy, I think,
Speaker 1: because it's hard to believe that a company that started
Speaker 1: off as a leather goods company got into the personal
Speaker 1: computer business. And for that matter, I should probably talk
Speaker 1: about IBM compatibles and clones too, as that was a big,
Speaker 1: big deal early on in the personal computer age and
Speaker 1: one of the reasons why IBM got out of the
Speaker 1: consumer computer market entirely for many years. But the important thing, uh,
Speaker 1: the important thing to remember in this part of the
Speaker 1: Condex story is that these companies were becoming important enough
Speaker 1: to warrant a spot on the show floor. By Condex
Speaker 1: started holding a show in Atlanta as the city where
Speaker 1: I am in. I'm from Atlanta, Georgia, So I remember
Speaker 1: Condex talked about. I was a kid in the eighties,
Speaker 1: and um, I never attended a Condex, but I remember
Speaker 1: people talking about them, and the show in Atlanta would
Speaker 1: continue yearly until nineteen and at that point, Comdex began
Speaker 1: to alternate between Atlanta and Chicago every year. So I
Speaker 1: probably would have been pretty bored if I had gone
Speaker 1: to one of the comdex is in Atlanta. I mean,
Speaker 1: these shows were huge, and there were lots of booths
Speaker 1: and everything, but again it was mostly about like productivity
Speaker 1: machines and software, and not really the kind of stuff
Speaker 1: I was interested in, which was namely computer games. He
Speaker 1: didn't really see a whole lot of that Condex because
Speaker 1: that's just not what the focus of the show was about. Also,
Speaker 1: in nineteen three, I Love This Bill Gates gave his
Speaker 1: first speech at a Comdex in nineteen eighty three, and
Speaker 1: that would become a regular event over future shows, and
Speaker 1: Gates would end up getting larger audiences every year. He
Speaker 1: would command a bigger room every year. Obviously became a
Speaker 1: much more important event in future comdex is, but back
Speaker 1: in three it was rather modest in comparison, so much
Speaker 1: so that the projectionist for Bill Gates's presentation was his
Speaker 1: own father. I just think that's kind of a charming
Speaker 1: little bit of information. Well, I've got more to say
Speaker 1: about what happened to comdex in the nineteen eighties, but
Speaker 1: before I get into that, let's take a quick break
Speaker 1: to thank our sponsor. All Right, So, a couple of
Speaker 1: big events happened in the early nineteen eighties that rippled
Speaker 1: through comdex. For one thing, the Macintosh debuted in nine four,
Speaker 1: and that's when the graphics user interface or Gooey, became
Speaker 1: big in home personal computers. The wind the Windows system
Speaker 1: Microsoft Windows also made a big splash around that same time,
Speaker 1: and Microsoft and Apple had worked together developing a Gooey.
Speaker 1: It wasn't exactly you might hear stories about, oh well,
Speaker 1: Windows was just copying the mac os. It's not entirely true. Actually,
Speaker 1: the two companies were working together to develop Gooey's And
Speaker 1: to be fair, the graphic user interface wasn't developed out
Speaker 1: of Apple or Microsoft. The graphic user interface originated as
Speaker 1: a project out of Xerox Park but that's another story
Speaker 1: for another time. The graphics user interface, however, was changing
Speaker 1: computers because it was seen as a much more intuitive,
Speaker 1: easy to understand system than command line systems. So in
Speaker 1: the old days, if you want to run a program
Speaker 1: on your computer, you had to type in run in
Speaker 1: the program name, and then the computer would know to
Speaker 1: execute that command and start that program. You might have
Speaker 1: some programs that had an auto startup based upon the
Speaker 1: disk that you were using, and that would make things
Speaker 1: a little more smooth. But until the graphics user interface
Speaker 1: came along, you couldn't just click on an icon and
Speaker 1: have have something start. You actually had to type stuff in,
Speaker 1: and it wasn't exactly user friendly for people who weren't
Speaker 1: already interested in computers, so it was sort of a
Speaker 1: barrier to entry. The graphic user interface lowered that barrier,
Speaker 1: and that's really when we started seeing personal computers take off,
Speaker 1: not just for homes but in schools and all sorts
Speaker 1: of places. So the Macintosh and the Windows system were
Speaker 1: really important, and they dominated the show floor by everyone
Speaker 1: was talking about Windows based systems and graphic user interfaces.
Speaker 1: And it's funny because if you look back on these
Speaker 1: early condex shows, you can see the debut of stuff
Speaker 1: that we all take for granted now, stuff that you
Speaker 1: know well of course that exists. Sometimes we're looking at
Speaker 1: debuts from the stuff that's completely obsolete at this point.
Speaker 1: So if you are able to find videos from that
Speaker 1: era and you watch them, it's almost comical to see
Speaker 1: them debut because it's ancient history now in the in
Speaker 1: the computer world, one of the resources I used when
Speaker 1: researching this show was an episode of The Computer Chronicles
Speaker 1: from so At the beginning of that episode, the CEO
Speaker 1: of Digital Research talked about how applications had suddenly become important.
Speaker 1: So he was referring to programs like desktop publishing software
Speaker 1: or spreadsheet management programs, things like that, and that they
Speaker 1: were taking center stage because they were taking advantage of
Speaker 1: this graphic user interface. It's really similar in a way
Speaker 1: to how smartphone apps have become a major focus in
Speaker 1: the tech industry today. The hardware still important, but a
Speaker 1: lot more intention is going towards the software running on
Speaker 1: top of the hardware. Well. Comdex was also where companies
Speaker 1: could show off new products like laser printers, which in
Speaker 1: the ease were super super new and exciting, or computer
Speaker 1: peripher roles or computer systems and software packages. And because
Speaker 1: the industry was heating up, the show just kept getting
Speaker 1: larger and more grandiose every year. And it wasn't long
Speaker 1: before companies began employing young women to entice people into booths.
Speaker 1: And I saw one journalist's account of an early nineteen
Speaker 1: eighties condex that dismissively referred to these women as demo dollies.
Speaker 1: Now at c S you tend to hear these women
Speaker 1: being referred to as booth babes, and I just like
Speaker 1: to take a moment to address this because it bugs me.
Speaker 1: So as I get older, I get more uncomfortable with
Speaker 1: these terms, and that's because they ignore the fact that
Speaker 1: these women are human beings. Many of them may be
Speaker 1: hired because of their appearance. You know. It might be
Speaker 1: that they have a modeling agency and a company hires
Speaker 1: them because of their profile and the modeling agency, and
Speaker 1: so it's completely based on their appearance. But it doesn't
Speaker 1: change the fact that we're talking about actual people here.
Speaker 1: I'm not a fan of companies using sex appeal to
Speaker 1: get people to pay attention to their stuff, particularly if
Speaker 1: we're talking about products that have nothing to do with
Speaker 1: being sexy in the first place, but the women and
Speaker 1: men too, because we see male models also being pulled
Speaker 1: in for this duty, especially for things like um, wearables
Speaker 1: and sports uh type of technology. At places like CS
Speaker 1: we see both women and men who are you know,
Speaker 1: chiseled from marble showing these off. But that makes sense.
Speaker 1: You understand, right all right, that this person is fit
Speaker 1: and the product is promising to help you get fit,
Speaker 1: So you see the connection there. It's a little more
Speaker 1: tough if you're like, this is a case for a
Speaker 1: smartphone and this woman wearing barely anything is holding the case,
Speaker 1: it's a little harder to justify. Uh. I don't hold
Speaker 1: it against the models. They're doing a job. They were
Speaker 1: hired to do a job, and that's what they're doing.
Speaker 1: And I also realized that my opinions are just my
Speaker 1: own and that I'm probably being a bit too old fashioned.
Speaker 1: But my main point is just to remember these are people,
Speaker 1: not just a walking, talking display. So I hate terms
Speaker 1: like booth babes or demo dollies, which I think is
Speaker 1: even somehow worse than booth babes um because it is
Speaker 1: so dismissive. It's it's treating a person like an object.
Speaker 1: It truly is objectification and I don't care for that.
Speaker 1: So old man lecture is over. But seriously, demo dollies
Speaker 1: come on anyway. By the mid nighties, companies creating IBM
Speaker 1: compatible machines had pretty much run IBM out of the
Speaker 1: consumer PC business. The clones of IBM s machines were
Speaker 1: perfectly legal as long as the company's making them could
Speaker 1: demonstrate that they didn't steal IBMS approach but rather reverse
Speaker 1: engineered it, which seems like a pretty fine detail, but
Speaker 1: it's one that made the production of IBM clones completely legal.
Speaker 1: More on that if I ever do a full episode
Speaker 1: about IBM compatible computers now. Watching the Computer Chronicles also
Speaker 1: reminded me how the industry at that time was dominated
Speaker 1: by dudes. You know, in the nineteen eighties, if you
Speaker 1: looked at the show floor for Condex, men outnumbered women
Speaker 1: by an enormous percentage. Apart from the women who were
Speaker 1: hired to lure people into booths, you hardly saw any
Speaker 1: females on the floor at all. But as the industry matured,
Speaker 1: we saw more women taking roles in the industry, including
Speaker 1: leadership roles. But I'm pretty sure those early CONDEX shows
Speaker 1: saw really long lines at the men's room and like
Speaker 1: almost completely empty women's restrooms, so and it seeing juxtaposition
Speaker 1: and other compared to other arenas. The same thing was
Speaker 1: true of Consumer Electronics Show and in fact, I would
Speaker 1: argue it's it's still largely true. We're seeing more and
Speaker 1: more UH women on the show floor at ce s,
Speaker 1: both in leadership positions and attendees that kind of thing,
Speaker 1: but I think it's still far more men than women.
Speaker 1: But but the early days of CONDEX, it was ridiculous
Speaker 1: that imbalance. One of the most amusing elements of the
Speaker 1: Computer Chronicles episode I watched was the segment dedicated to
Speaker 1: portable computers. So back in the nineteen eighties this was
Speaker 1: six Those devices were huge, largely because they had to
Speaker 1: have five and a quarter inch floppy disk drives because
Speaker 1: that was the the main media of choice in the
Speaker 1: mid eighties. The laptops, even the light ones, weighed somewhere
Speaker 1: around twelve pounds or more, so they were hefty enough
Speaker 1: that you wouldn't want them on your lap for very long.
Speaker 1: You'd also probably chuckle at hearing some of the processor
Speaker 1: speeds being UH promoted back in those days, here's something
Speaker 1: like this processor has sixteen mega hurts processor speed, and
Speaker 1: you know that's probably not gonna impress you very much today,
Speaker 1: but you know, a different time. Another interesting product that
Speaker 1: was introduced and featured in that show was from Phillips.
Speaker 1: It was a data storage system that consisted of twenty
Speaker 1: different disks arranged in a case. The discs were in cartridges,
Speaker 1: and a mechanical arm could go up or down the
Speaker 1: rack of cartridges and retrieve or insert discs to access
Speaker 1: the information on them. Now, each disc was twelve inches
Speaker 1: in diameter, and each disc could hold two whole gigabytes
Speaker 1: of information on it, which meant that the entire apparatus
Speaker 1: could hold forty gigabytes. So think about that for a moment.
Speaker 1: They're smartphones right now that can more than three times
Speaker 1: that amount of information, and those will fit in your pocket.
Speaker 1: So we've really come a long way since the nineteen eighties.
Speaker 1: The six Condex show also had some of the earliest
Speaker 1: devices that we would put into the wearable category today.
Speaker 1: Puma showed off a gadget that snapped onto their running
Speaker 1: shoes and it had a microprocessor inside of it that
Speaker 1: could detect whenever your foot made impact with the ground
Speaker 1: and it acted as a step counter, So you could
Speaker 1: use it on a run and you could do your run,
Speaker 1: and then after you were done running, you would have
Speaker 1: to go back home and you would have to use
Speaker 1: a cable to hook the gadget up to your computer
Speaker 1: and pull the data off of the device so that
Speaker 1: you could look at it through the software running on
Speaker 1: your computer. That would give you a visualization of the data,
Speaker 1: and then you could see how far you ran and
Speaker 1: how many calories you burned. It's not quite as easy
Speaker 1: as connecting everything via Bluetooth, which is typically how it
Speaker 1: happens today, but it was a hint of what would
Speaker 1: follow almost thirty years later. Other emerging technologies that began
Speaker 1: to pop up at Comdex in the early to mid
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties included voice recognition, optical discs so CDs, and
Speaker 1: things like that, three and a half inch floppy disks,
Speaker 1: and others, and we began to see the interesting seesaw
Speaker 1: relationship between hardware and software. So if you read articles
Speaker 1: from the nineteen eighties about Condex, you'll see journalists point
Speaker 1: out that these incredibly powerful computers that were hitting the
Speaker 1: market didn't have any software that took advantage of all
Speaker 1: that raw power, they'd say like, well, yeah, you can
Speaker 1: get the super fast machine, but what good is that.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's no software that really takes advantage of
Speaker 1: this machine's capabilities. We're never going to see that happened.
Speaker 1: I mean, it'll it'll run existing software faster, so if
Speaker 1: you've got like a huge spreadsheet, it won't take as
Speaker 1: long re read to load. But other than that, I mean,
Speaker 1: why would you need all that power? Now, it's kind
Speaker 1: of funny to think that a three six processor computer
Speaker 1: from the mid nineteen eighties was thought to be more
Speaker 1: powerful than anything you would ever need, because a three
Speaker 1: six computer compared to today's smartphones would see clunk, clunky,
Speaker 1: and slow in comparison. Since those days, we've seen a
Speaker 1: lot more tech journalists agree to what is called Worth's law,
Speaker 1: which is named after Nicholas Worth, who observed that software
Speaker 1: speed was decreasing at a rate faster than hardware speed
Speaker 1: was increasing. So, in other words, software is getting bloated
Speaker 1: and requires more resources to run faster than we're seeing
Speaker 1: improvements in those resources. So year over year, it feels
Speaker 1: like computers are going slower rather than faster. It's not
Speaker 1: that the computers are less powerful than they were before.
Speaker 1: It's that the software requires more power than the previous
Speaker 1: generations software. And that's because we get bloat software bloat
Speaker 1: over the course of many versions of the same program.
Speaker 1: So take take a word processor program. Well, every successive
Speaker 1: version of that word processor program is likely to be
Speaker 1: larger and more resource hungry than the version before, because
Speaker 1: a company has to start including more and more features
Speaker 1: to convince you to upgrade, to buy the newest version. Otherwise,
Speaker 1: you would just buy one version and you'd stick with
Speaker 1: it until you, you know, until it just literally could
Speaker 1: not measure up to what you needed it to do.
Speaker 1: I mean, why would I need to buy a new
Speaker 1: word processor program if I've got one that works just fine.
Speaker 1: So to convince me to buy a new one, companies
Speaker 1: are going to add more and more features. Well. As
Speaker 1: software gets more complex, it becomes less efficient and therefore
Speaker 1: it requires more power to run. And even to this day,
Speaker 1: there's still a temptation to declare a machine that has
Speaker 1: a screaming fast processor and cavernous storage capacity is being
Speaker 1: more than what you are ever going to need. But
Speaker 1: the more seasoned computer users among us know that eventually
Speaker 1: software is going to use up and maybe even exceed
Speaker 1: that hardware's capabilities. So if you build it, the software
Speaker 1: will fill it. It's kind of like if you build it,
Speaker 1: they will come. Now. The show in Vegas in nineteen
Speaker 1: eight six was just one of seven. The other six
Speaker 1: shows happened in Tokyo, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Amsterdam, Nice, and Sydney.
Speaker 1: And the show in nineteen eighty six in Vegas lasted
Speaker 1: five days. That was the longest conference up to that point.
Speaker 1: So things were still on the rise. Everything was still
Speaker 1: growing every year. More money was being poured into the show,
Speaker 1: and each show meant that there was more square footage
Speaker 1: to least two companies, and the organizers were making some
Speaker 1: serious bank in those days. Meanwhile, exhibitors were enjoying the
Speaker 1: benefits of connecting with customers and getting an eye on
Speaker 1: what the competition was up to, and a lot of
Speaker 1: ideas were launched at Condex, not all of them successfully.
Speaker 1: There were plenty of examples of products that never went anywhere,
Speaker 1: and vaporware became a common word. Vaporware, by the way,
Speaker 1: is when you announce a product that never actually comes
Speaker 1: to market, it just remains vapor. It's the kaiser So's
Speaker 1: of the technological world. Now some Condex shows also became vaporware.
Speaker 1: In nineteen seven and in nineteen eighty eight, the planned
Speaker 1: Condex event in Tokyo was postponed, essentially canceled. It never
Speaker 1: really happened. The nine event for Paris was canceled out
Speaker 1: right Now, things were not dire, not by a long shot,
Speaker 1: but there were some growing pains as the organizers kept
Speaker 1: trying to increase the show's reach. Sometimes they did it
Speaker 1: faster than they could actually support, and typically the reason
Speaker 1: these shows would get canceled is because they weren't. The
Speaker 1: show organizers weren't able to sell out enough space on
Speaker 1: the show floor to justify holding the trade show. So
Speaker 1: they couldn't get enough vendors to agree to come to
Speaker 1: a show, they'd postponed it or cancel it rather than
Speaker 1: lose money on throwing a show with a small number
Speaker 1: of exhibitors. By the late nineteen eighties, Condex was looking
Speaker 1: to grow some more, so it changed its attendance policy
Speaker 1: and started to sell it admission to the general public,
Speaker 1: so for the first time, people unaffiliated with the industry
Speaker 1: or people who were not in the media could actually
Speaker 1: come to the show and no big surprise here. Attendance
Speaker 1: numbers exploded as a result. Now, this was not necessarily
Speaker 1: welcomed by all the other attendees. Some people were complaining
Speaker 1: that it was becoming too difficult to navigate the floor
Speaker 1: because it was just there were just too many people.
Speaker 1: There're too many bodies in the way. And other people
Speaker 1: were worried that the show would turn into an enormous
Speaker 1: marketplace with the general public purchasing products directly from manufacturers
Speaker 1: rather than retailers. You know, like, why bother packing this
Speaker 1: device back up and shipping it back to your headquarters.
Speaker 1: I'll just buy it off of you right here, even
Speaker 1: though it's not scheduled to launch for another three months.
Speaker 1: You also heard a lot of people say the show
Speaker 1: was starting to lose its focus. It was it was
Speaker 1: starting to incorporate too many things outside of the core
Speaker 1: computer and computer peripheral industry, and as a result, there
Speaker 1: were a lot of people worried that the show was
Speaker 1: starting to spiral out of control. Now, the early nine
Speaker 1: nineties saw the rise of a new, very important player
Speaker 1: in the computer space, and that is the Internet. While
Speaker 1: the mainstream public was still getting a handle on what
Speaker 1: the Internet was back In the early es, Condex began
Speaker 1: to feature more exhibitors, promising the information super Highway would
Speaker 1: change everything, and in many ways they were right, though
Speaker 1: not all of their predictions would turn out to be accurate.
Speaker 1: For one thing, in the early nine nineties, no one
Speaker 1: really had an idea of how the Internet could become
Speaker 1: a massive tool for commerce. It was more like a
Speaker 1: point of contact for people. So companies might have a website,
Speaker 1: but it was meant to give information about a company,
Speaker 1: or to allow a potential customer or an existing customer
Speaker 1: to contact the company. But there wasn't a whole lot
Speaker 1: beyond that in those early days, especially since you know,
Speaker 1: the Worldwide Web didn't really debut until so before that.
Speaker 1: You're just talking about stuff like email and some other
Speaker 1: functions that were mainly used in the academic world, and
Speaker 1: we're just barely getting a foothold in the corporate and
Speaker 1: then public world. Now. Over the next several years, more
Speaker 1: exhibitors would show off systems designed to make accessing the
Speaker 1: Internet more intuitive and seamless, all the way from operating
Speaker 1: systems to web browsers. In early news broke that a
Speaker 1: suitor to Comdex would be taking over the show, and
Speaker 1: that suitor was a Japanese software company called soft Bank.
Speaker 1: The company made an eight hundred million dollar deal with
Speaker 1: the Interface Group to acquire the trade show. Now in
Speaker 1: nineteen four, SoftBank had already purchased a publishing, exposition and
Speaker 1: conference division from the company Ziff Davis. They had tried
Speaker 1: to buy Ziff Davis outright, but z if Davis refused
Speaker 1: and then instead settled on buying this division within Stiff Davis.
Speaker 1: So as If Davis spins Zala division sells it to SoftBank.
Speaker 1: This division was an events planning division for publishing expositions.
Speaker 1: Then SoftBank goes and buys condex from the Interface Group
Speaker 1: for eight hundred million dollars. Now, these two purchases made
Speaker 1: SoftBank the largest name in the trade show game, and
Speaker 1: it also gave some prestige to the CEO of SoftBank,
Speaker 1: who is Masa Yoshi's son, who was sometimes called the
Speaker 1: Bill Gates of Japan, and his story is really interesting too.
Speaker 1: Son had overcome poverty and also social stigma to become
Speaker 1: a successful businessman in Japan. He was the son of
Speaker 1: two Korean immigrants, and in Japan at the time, Koreans
Speaker 1: were sometimes the victims of racial prejudice. So his story
Speaker 1: is pretty interesting. Maybe I'll do an episode about him sometime.
Speaker 1: At this point, Comdex was enormous. The show in Vegas
Speaker 1: had almost two hundred thousand people in attendance. That's a
Speaker 1: huge jump from that four thousand from nineteen seventy nine.
Speaker 1: Now keep in mind they are also opened up the
Speaker 1: doors to the general public, so part of that growth
Speaker 1: was just from people curious to learn more about the
Speaker 1: latest computers, but they had no connection to the industry itself. Now,
Speaker 1: along with the growth in attendance was a growth of
Speaker 1: complaints among exhibitors. Some companies were protesting what they considered
Speaker 1: to be unfair fees and rental rates. But even though
Speaker 1: they felt that perhaps things were becoming a little unfair,
Speaker 1: most companies also felt that the show was too important
Speaker 1: to skip. They couldn't skip out on it, or else
Speaker 1: they would be left behind by their competitors, so they
Speaker 1: would show up and they would pay. There had been
Speaker 1: talks of launching a competitor show, like a bunch of
Speaker 1: groups saying, you know what, forget this, We're gonna go
Speaker 1: out and make our own trade show. But they hadn't
Speaker 1: really gone far beyond just some big talk. Now, in
Speaker 1: the next section, I'm going to really concentrate on how
Speaker 1: the show got to its largest point and then what
Speaker 1: happened to make it disappear over the next few years.
Speaker 1: But before I get into that, let's take another quick
Speaker 1: break to thank our sponsor. All right, So it's Condex
Speaker 1: hits its peak. It gets the largest it will ever
Speaker 1: get in. The number of exhibitors was more than two thousand,
Speaker 1: four hundred and eighty and they were taking up one
Speaker 1: point three five million square feet of space on the
Speaker 1: show floor. In the primary Vegas show of the year,
Speaker 1: the number of attendees was about two hundred forty thousand.
Speaker 1: I mean a huge number of people, like a quarter
Speaker 1: of a million people almost at Condex Las Vegas. This
Speaker 1: was a monster of a show, but it also marked
Speaker 1: the beginning of the decline of Condex. Exhibitors were complaining
Speaker 1: even more about predatory practices of Condex staffers, pressuring companies
Speaker 1: to invest in larger booths year over year. They were saying, well,
Speaker 1: we want to be part of the show, but every
Speaker 1: year we're making the arrangements. Everyone's pressuring us to make
Speaker 1: our booth bigger than the year before, which means we
Speaker 1: have to spend more money in or to be part
Speaker 1: of this show. And it's getting ridiculous. It got so
Speaker 1: ridiculous for some companies that began to drop out, including
Speaker 1: big names. IBM withdrew from Condex because of these practices,
Speaker 1: and according to a CNN Money report from two thousand three,
Speaker 1: Condex became a quote magnet for dumb money end quote. Now,
Speaker 1: what they meant by that is that if you participated
Speaker 1: in Condex year over year, that was just a recipe
Speaker 1: of diminishing returns. You were going to see fewer and
Speaker 1: fewer benefits of being part of the show, and ultimately
Speaker 1: it would become a drain on resources, meaning you're losing
Speaker 1: more money attending the show than you're making out of
Speaker 1: business because of the show. So more exhibitors were starting
Speaker 1: to drop out following they were saying, well, I'm spending money,
Speaker 1: but I don't see the return on investment. This is
Speaker 1: like putting a big time commercial out on a channel
Speaker 1: that no one is watching. What's the point? Now? Behind
Speaker 1: the scenes, in a series of moves so complicated, I
Speaker 1: don't even understand them, SoftBank reorganized its divisions and departments
Speaker 1: So it took the division that owned Condex and that
Speaker 1: publishing conference I talked about before. It was essentially known
Speaker 1: as z d Events at the time, and transformed this
Speaker 1: into a new entity, a publicly traded entity called Key
Speaker 1: three Media. That's key the numeral three and media all
Speaker 1: is one word. And this was a holding company. It
Speaker 1: was just existed to hold these assets. That's that's all
Speaker 1: it did. Now soft Bank held about half of the
Speaker 1: ownership of Key three Media, but eventually it would spin
Speaker 1: it off completely. Now that happened after SoftBank tried to
Speaker 1: auction off the events division. So why was it trying
Speaker 1: to sell something the company had only purchased a couple
Speaker 1: of years before. Well, perhaps organizing and running the events
Speaker 1: was too far outside the wheelhouse of the software corporation.
Speaker 1: The acquisition of Condex and Ziff Davis's publishing conference didn't
Speaker 1: necessarily include the people with the knowledge and experience of
Speaker 1: organizing those events. At any rate, the auction did not
Speaker 1: result in any satisfactory authors. Apparently, the largest offer on
Speaker 1: the table was for six D forty million dollars, which
Speaker 1: is way less than the eight million SoftBank paid for
Speaker 1: Condex alone. Never mind the Ziff Davis deal, so Key
Speaker 1: three Media would eventually become an independent spinoff and the
Speaker 1: sole owner of Condex now. The head of Key three
Speaker 1: Media was a guy named Fred Rosen, and Rosen had
Speaker 1: made a fortune growing and then selling ticket Master. Boo
Speaker 1: ticket Master. That's my own personal uh bias coming through.
Speaker 1: I have an issue with Ticketmaster, many issues with Ticketmaster.
Speaker 1: I should do an episode about them, but it will
Speaker 1: be the most unbiased, unforgiving episode of tech stuff ever,
Speaker 1: So maybe I should just keep my trap shut. Anyway,
Speaker 1: Rosen reportedly ran Key three as if it were a
Speaker 1: massive corporation rather than an events production company. He moved
Speaker 1: the headquarters to an expensive part of Los Angeles, not
Speaker 1: too far from his own mansion, and he would end
Speaker 1: up taking company trips on a private jet across the world.
Speaker 1: His salary was one and a half million dollars in
Speaker 1: two thousand one. That's a big salary for a CEO,
Speaker 1: especially considering most CEOs get the majority of their compensation
Speaker 1: and benefits as opposed to a direct salary. A million
Speaker 1: and a half and two thousand one is no chump change.
Speaker 1: Former employees said that his managerial style was incredibly confrontational
Speaker 1: and off putting so much so that he was driving
Speaker 1: away staffers who had been working in the trade show
Speaker 1: industry for decades, which meant that as a result, Key
Speaker 1: three was depleting its company's talent pool. You had fewer
Speaker 1: and fewer people around who knew how to handle trade shows.
Speaker 1: So it was a mess. To put it lightly. Now,
Speaker 1: this takes us to and this was the year that
Speaker 1: featured that infamous blue screen of death during a demonstration
Speaker 1: of an early build of Windows. You heard our listener
Speaker 1: Alex referred to this earlier. So what happened, well, Bill
Speaker 1: Gates and Chris capo Sella were on stage during the
Speaker 1: keynote event to talk about Windows Night, which had not
Speaker 1: yet launched. It was still in development, it had actually
Speaker 1: been delayed, and Capsella was trying to show how Windows
Speaker 1: ninety eight could download drivers. You know, drivers are these
Speaker 1: components that are needed so for software and hardware to
Speaker 1: work with the operating system, and he was explaining how
Speaker 1: seamless this operation was when the computer crashed and went
Speaker 1: to the blue screen of death, at which point Bill
Speaker 1: Gates started uckling and Capacella was like doing a little
Speaker 1: bit of a shuffle. He was very quickly trying to
Speaker 1: switch away from the monitor screen, and it could have
Speaker 1: been an embarrassing disaster, but I think they actually handled
Speaker 1: the problem really well with humor. So the audience started laughing,
Speaker 1: and Capacella, who was responding to the audiences laughter at
Speaker 1: the blue screen of death, said moving right along in
Speaker 1: a very self deprecating way, like he wasn't angry. He
Speaker 1: seemed a little a little chagrined, but not not completely
Speaker 1: thrown off. And then Bill Gates said this must be
Speaker 1: why we're not shipping windows yet, to which Capacella said, absolutely, absolutely.
Speaker 1: So it was a moment that reminded everyone that sometimes
Speaker 1: stuff just goes wrong. And I actually like watching this clip.
Speaker 1: I I was afraid to watch it. I never watched
Speaker 1: it at the time. And I tend to feel a
Speaker 1: lot of empathy for people who are giving a public
Speaker 1: presentation because there are enormous pressures on you when you
Speaker 1: are giving a live speech in front of a big
Speaker 1: crowd of people. Keep in mind, we're talking Condex when
Speaker 1: the attendance is like two hundred thousand plus people. You
Speaker 1: could have thousands of people in that audience all focusing
Speaker 1: on you and something goes wrong. I feel nothing but
Speaker 1: empathy because I've been in those kind of situations and
Speaker 1: a much smaller scale and it feels like torture. But
Speaker 1: I liked watching this clip because it didn't feel awful.
Speaker 1: It felt like they handled this pretty well as it
Speaker 1: feels actually pretty natural. So for one thing, it's not
Speaker 1: a presentation that fools you into thinking of product is
Speaker 1: completely flawless. If you've ever been to any product demonstration
Speaker 1: where it's clear everything has been prerecorded and rehearsed so
Speaker 1: that nothing goes wrong, it doesn't feel genuine, and you
Speaker 1: might even feel when you get your hands on the
Speaker 1: real thing that you were given a misrepresentation of what
Speaker 1: it was all about. Seeing something kind of fail and
Speaker 1: people acknowledge it and move on it was a little refreshing.
Speaker 1: So it's just a kind of a funny moment, and
Speaker 1: something that Microsoft presentations frequently had that is funny moments,
Speaker 1: not failures. And some of those funny moments were intentional,
Speaker 1: and some of them we're not intentional. Developers Developers, Developers
Speaker 1: Developers was also the first year to see a major
Speaker 1: decline in attendance. So I said two hundred thousand, but
Speaker 1: actually it was fewer than that. At that point. This
Speaker 1: was the beginning of the end for Comdex, though at
Speaker 1: the time no one could see that. It did just
Speaker 1: appear to be a blip in the growth, and the
Speaker 1: following year saw another dip, and the number of exhibitors
Speaker 1: in two thousand or rather was one thousand, nine eleven,
Speaker 1: so more than two thousand, four hundred. In nine seven
Speaker 1: and nine eleven, we start seeing fewer exhibitors showing up.
Speaker 1: More people are irritated with the way Comdex is running things,
Speaker 1: or rather the way Key three Media is running things,
Speaker 1: and are not coming back. Now. There was a little
Speaker 1: bit of a rally in two thousand a few more
Speaker 1: exhibitors signed up, mostly new companies, but that was not
Speaker 1: to last. Also in Condex, organizers shook things up by
Speaker 1: changing the requirements for mass media, and a lot of
Speaker 1: major outlets that had been covering context since the beginning
Speaker 1: found themselves turned away, and that really shook things up.
Speaker 1: I mean, you had big, big names and mass media
Speaker 1: told that they were not going to be allowed to
Speaker 1: attend Comdex, and that did not help the organization at all.
Speaker 1: I mean, making sure that you um, you alienate media
Speaker 1: is a good way to have some pretty negative coverage
Speaker 1: about your organization. And in two thousand and two thousand one,
Speaker 1: there was another problem. This was outside of Condex. This
Speaker 1: was a huge problem that had global implications, and I'm
Speaker 1: talking about the dot com bubble burst. So the dot
Speaker 1: com bubble, that's when you had all these web based
Speaker 1: companies popping up, getting huge amounts of investment capital, whether
Speaker 1: it was private investment or the company had gone public
Speaker 1: very early. The value of the company was inflated beyond
Speaker 1: what it could actually do. And then ultimately many of
Speaker 1: these companies failed to show any real value and the bubble,
Speaker 1: this investment bubble burst. Dozens of companies went under, and
Speaker 1: companies in the computer industry in general suffered, even if
Speaker 1: they weren't directly tied to dot com, because they were
Speaker 1: in the computer industry, they were hit pretty hard because
Speaker 1: there was a ripple effect that came outward from the
Speaker 1: dot com companies to all the other computer companies that were,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of in that same pool, even though
Speaker 1: they weren't necessarily themselves and dot com company. Well, that
Speaker 1: meant that that ripple effect continued to hit Condex. And
Speaker 1: another event also ended up really setting Condex back, and
Speaker 1: that was the terrorist attack on September eleven, two thousand
Speaker 1: one in the United States that affected trade shows because
Speaker 1: it ended up affecting international travel. It's scaled back international
Speaker 1: travel to to a huge degree in the wake of
Speaker 1: those attacks, completely understandably. I mean, there's there's there's nothing
Speaker 1: else to say about that. But it did affect the
Speaker 1: trade shows at a time when Condex was already having problems.
Speaker 1: So the Las Vegas Condex show in two thousand one
Speaker 1: had a hundred twenty five thousand attendees, and that's still
Speaker 1: a large number of people, you know, hundred twenty five thousand,
Speaker 1: but still very short of that two forty thousand the
Speaker 1: show had at its peak. In two thousand two, Key
Speaker 1: three Media was in dire straits and not the band.
Speaker 1: With three days to go before the Las Vegas Trade
Speaker 1: Show opened, the company announced in its quarterly earning statement
Speaker 1: that it might have to or Chapter eleven bankruptcy protection
Speaker 1: if it could not raise more capital, or sell the
Speaker 1: company off or find a merger partner. Key three Media's
Speaker 1: revenue had plummeted in two thousand two, so in two
Speaker 1: thousand one, the third quarter revenues were at fifty one
Speaker 1: and a half million. In two thousand two, third quarter
Speaker 1: revenues were down to thirty eight point four million. That's
Speaker 1: a big drop over the course of the full year.
Speaker 1: The company had lost nearly three hundred million dollars. In
Speaker 1: two thousand one, it was in the black and it
Speaker 1: made a profit of fourteen point one million. It's a
Speaker 1: small profit relatively speaking, but the loss of three hundred
Speaker 1: million that's a huge, huge downturn. Things were looking pretty awful.
Speaker 1: On top of that, the company had an upcoming interest
Speaker 1: payment on a debt it owed, and no one was
Speaker 1: really sure if they the company would actually be able
Speaker 1: to sign the check to pay off that interest payment,
Speaker 1: which is why they were looking at the possibility of
Speaker 1: entering Chapter eleven bankruptcy protection. Shares of Key three Media
Speaker 1: were down to a measly one point four since per share.
Speaker 1: It's pretty ugly, folks now. In February two thousand three,
Speaker 1: the Key three Media filed for Chapter eleven protection. When
Speaker 1: it finally emerged from Chapter eleven, so they were able
Speaker 1: to get their act together and come out of Chapter
Speaker 1: eleven bankruptcy protection. They also rebranded themselves. They were no
Speaker 1: longer Key three Media. Now they were called Media Live,
Speaker 1: and there was some hope that this new brand would
Speaker 1: be able to recapture the glory days of Condexes in
Speaker 1: the past, but it was not meant to be. The
Speaker 1: two thousand three show drew only fifty thousand attendees. Fifty thousand,
Speaker 1: still a lot of people, but not compared to two
Speaker 1: In two thousand four, in a move that shocked very
Speaker 1: few people, Condex Las Vegas was canceled. The struggles of
Speaker 1: Media Alive were well known. They were pretty public. People
Speaker 1: knew that the company was in trouble. Attendance had dropped
Speaker 1: significantly over the past few years, so many large companies
Speaker 1: had pulled out the show, expressing their exasperation of dealing
Speaker 1: with the policies and high pressure sales tactics of the organizers.
Speaker 1: There were still some hope along Media Live lines that
Speaker 1: two thousand five would be different than they would be
Speaker 1: able to come back in two thousand five and two
Speaker 1: thousand four would just be a year off. But in
Speaker 1: two thousand five, all of the company's planned condex events
Speaker 1: were canceled except for one, so it was supposed to
Speaker 1: happen in Las Vegas but didn't. The only Condex event
Speaker 1: to happen in that year was in Greece in Athens,
Speaker 1: but all the other ones were canceled. Analysts said that
Speaker 1: the implosion of Condex came about due to a mix
Speaker 1: of mismanagement, depletion of talent, bad marketing choices, and also
Speaker 1: just that exhibitors weren't willing to play ball anymore. So
Speaker 1: the problem was that they couldn't had enough companies to
Speaker 1: agree to be part of the show to have a show.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like throwing a huge party advertised as
Speaker 1: a star studded event, but the only celebrities who show
Speaker 1: up are a couple of folks from one of the
Speaker 1: later seasons of MTVS The real world doesn't really work.
Speaker 1: You can't really fuel celebrity party that way. No offense
Speaker 1: to anyone who's ever been on MTVS the real world.
Speaker 1: It didn't help that shows like the Consumer Electronics Show,
Speaker 1: now known just as c e S, had become more popular.
Speaker 1: Some of the big names that had been regulars at
Speaker 1: comdex had withdrawn, and now we're attending c e S instead.
Speaker 1: Comdex would see a bit of a revival, a strange
Speaker 1: revival in two thousand ten. So it had gone dead
Speaker 1: between two thousand four and two thousand and ten. But
Speaker 1: in two thousand and ten we saw Condex Virtual. So
Speaker 1: instead of a physical trade show that you would go
Speaker 1: and attend for drink, thousands of people walking around the
Speaker 1: convention center, Condex Virtual was a website you would go
Speaker 1: to and it's simulated a trade show. You could watch
Speaker 1: keynote speeches, and you could virtually visit vendor booths. And
Speaker 1: it showed up again in two thousand eleven and one
Speaker 1: more time in two thousand twelve, and then it faded away.
Speaker 1: If you were to go to the Condex Virtual website today,
Speaker 1: you would get an under construction page, which seems charmingly
Speaker 1: out of date if you ask me. And that's the
Speaker 1: story of Condex from its birth to its death. Trade
Speaker 1: shows still exist. Some of them are as large or
Speaker 1: larger than Condex was at its height. Others are a
Speaker 1: bit more modest, and we're seeing some companies like Apple
Speaker 1: and Google concentrate on holding their own events rather than
Speaker 1: abiding by an annual trade show schedule. So instead of
Speaker 1: saying we're gonna hold off on announcing something until someone
Speaker 1: else's schedule lines up, they say, no, we'll hold our
Speaker 1: own events and we don't. That way, we don't get
Speaker 1: lost in the shuffle. I hope you enjoyed this episode,
Speaker 1: Thanks again to Alex for suggesting it. If you have
Speaker 1: a show idea you'd like me to cover, please let
Speaker 1: me know. You can send me an email at tech
Speaker 1: stuff at how stuff works dot com, or drop me
Speaker 1: a line on Twitter or Facebook. The show's handle is
Speaker 1: tech stuff h s W and I'll talk to you
Speaker 1: again really soon. For more on this and thousands of
Speaker 1: other topics, is it how stuff works dot com.