TechWeb kills SD West, SD Best Practices
SD West and SD Best Practices are dead.
If you attended last week’s SD West, you know that the event has become a shadow of its former self. As TechWeb (formerly CMP) continues shifting its focus away from the software development market, the demise of SD West is easy to understand. (TechWeb shuttered Dr. Dobb’s Journal earlier this year.)
Pity. SD West was always an important conference — just as DDJ was an important publication. But TechWeb has more important things to focus on, like InformationWeek. The Software Development Conference (as it used to be called) will be missed!
Here’s what the folks at TechWeb are telling SD West exhibitors:
Dear [exhibitor]:
Due to the current economic situation, TechWeb has made the difficult decision to discontinue the Software Development events, including SD West, SD Best Practices and Architecture & Design World. We are grateful for your support during SD’s twenty-four year history and are disappointed to see the events end.
Developers remain important to TechWeb, and we encourage you to participate in other TechWeb brands, online and face-to-face, which include vibrant developer communities:
Cloud Connect, which will take over SD West’s dates in March 2010 at the Santa Clara Convention Center.
Web 2.0 Expo
Dr. Dobb’s
Black Hat
Again, please accept our sincerest gratitude for your time, effort and contributions over the years. It is much appreciated.
Are they going to make the previous preseos publicly available?
Though I lack much information about the finances and organizational situation (though I understand that perpetual reorganization, a hallmark of CMP culture, has continued unabated), I still want to state that PERHAPS this signals the failure of a media strategy that eliminates editorial products in favor of live events. Journalism may always be a loss leader, but it is also always a community builder and a trusted voice. One by one those voices are silenced, because they are not “profitable.” The effects aren’t felt immediately; instead, it’s a slow strangulation as the flow of information by and about the people who might attend the event diminishes.
I’m not saying it’s simple, or that print media and traditional publishing companies everywhere aren’t in a downward spiral that initiated with the dot-com bust. I am saying that eliminating content CREATORS, formerly known as writers and journalists, is as shortsighted as eliminating sales.
Jim – I have no idea.
I think the challenge is in running conferences at a profit. There are many IT conferences targeted at software developers such as OWASP but they have figured out how to provide higher-value information with a little less polish at a cheaper price…
Of course the challenge is running them at a profit. Trust me, SD conference ran a LARGE profit for decades. The economy was very hard to beat this year, and the software development niche has been a target for corporate cost-cutting at company-formerly-known-as-CMP for about 5 years.
Well, considering I was a speaker and track chair at the conference, yeah this conference this year hurt big time…
But the reality is that if you look at where the company wants to go it is in the Web era!
I find this completely funny because the last space that I would right focus on is the web space.
It is a mature market that will not have growth….