IT’S A MATCH
A new event-networking platform allows attendees to scan online contacts on selected social, professional and e-mail networks and then matches them to the event’s registration database to determine who’s registered for the event. The cool part? The service, eventSocial, also allows attendees to send invites directly from the eventSocial interface to other registrants to meet up at the show. The service debuted this month; attendees at the DMA09 Conference & Exhibition were the first to give it a go. In just three days, 687 attendees sent 3,265 invitations to attend DMA09 via eventSocial. More than 100 invitations to meet at the show were sent to those contacts already registered to attend. Among attendees’ online networks, LinkedIn was the most popular, representing 60 percent of the networks scanned and 98 percent of the contacts e-mailed. Find out more at www.bdmetrics.com.

90%
The approximate number of young pro fessionals likely to attend an exhibition in the next two years, according to a generational research study, The Power of Exhibitions in the 21st Century, from The Center for Exhibition Industry Research. The study found that 57 percent of respondents — aged 18 to 39 who are employed full-time and have a personal annual income of $30,000 or more — attended at least one exhibition in the past two years. Nearly nine in 10 recent attendees went to an education session at their most recent exhibition and 96 percent visited exhibit booths.

BLAST FROM THE PAST
Where were you 30 years ago this month? If you were a major player in the tech industry, you were probably attending the very first COMDEX show in Las Vegas. At its peak, the event was the largest annual show in the industry with 1.2 million net square feet of exhibit space at an unprecedented $60 a square foot. Attendance peaked at 200,000, including exhibitors. For more than 20 years it was as dominant in the trade show industry as it was in the IT industry it served. The show launched spinoffs (including COMDEX/Spring and COMDEX/Asia). Then, the channel changed. Product types diversified to include niche products and services, and some products were sold both as business products and consumer electronics. Horizontal shows were on the way out, and vertical was in. The show ultimately disbanded in 2003, but the COMDEX legacy lives on.