COMDEX resurrection an indefinite 'maybe'

The headline hit like a fist to the gut: "COMDEX Las Vegas 2004 Postponed."

Truthfully, it should have read, "COMDEX is dead." That's not how I felt last November, however.

In retrospect, it seems like COMDEX has been around forever, and in the tech world, it basically has.

First held in Las Vegas in the fall of 1979 as the Computer Dealer Exposition with some 4,000 geeks in attendance, COMDEX had steadily grown to hit a high of more than 200,000 attendees in 1999. Me — I've been COMDEXing every year since 1986 (except for the year I was knocked out of commission by a ruptured Achilles tendon, but that's another story).

Primarily in attendance to help various clients help publicize, market or sell their tech wares, I've found COMDEX to be very, very good to me over the years. Nevertheless, during my annual sojourns to COMDEX I've stayed in the worst dive hotels and the best resort casinos; I've met some of the weirdest and flakiest people as well as some of the best; and I've had some pretty amazing experiences along with some experiences I'd just as soon forget.

As mentioned above, 1999 was the top year for attendance at COMDEX, and getting around Vegas that third week in November was an absolute nightmare (even if you were lucky/smart enough to have a rental car).

COMDEX 2000 saw a definite scaling back to somewhere between 150,000 and 160,000 attendees, but it was still a rocking show.

Mid-November 2001, however, I remember sitting in the COMDEX press tent on Monday morning glued to the television watching sketchy reports come in on CNN about the unexplained crash of a jet airliner in New York City.

Speculation ran pretty high that day as to the cause of the crash, both on air and in the press room, particularly as it occurred nearly two months to the day after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. If memory serves me right, however, the cause turned out to be a simple mechanical failure. Even so, it cast a pall over the tech proceedings in Sin City that year. And as we know now, the attendance slide was just beginning.

Long-time readers of this column realize that I'm a "glass half-full" kind of guy, a definite optimist. So naturally, that's how I wrote about COMDEX Fall 2003.