CONVERGENCE WATCH Telecom, computers link up for show >BY Beth Snyder, Associate Editor-News

The Telecommunications Reform Act of 1996 continues to spawn mergers and acquisitions between vendors and even service providers. Last week, two groups put a new spin on the merging and converging. The MultiMedia Telecommunications Association and Softbank Comdex announced that they would join forces and resources to host trade shows and conferences. The first of those telecommunications and computer-oriented shows will be Unicom '96 in November.

"With the deregulation, traditional service providers want to get into the other areas of the business, which is information processing or, if you will, computers," said Milt Herbert, executive vice president of Softbank Comdex.

MMTA agrees that the fit is a good one. The convention business is changing, said Bill Moroney, MMTA's president and chief executive officer. Some shows are now co-locating two industry groups that traditionally do not intermingle but suddenly need to learn how to interface or interoperate. "We're marrying the desktop process with the long-distance communication vehicles," Herbert said. "This is where they'll be able to have a place where they come together. You don't have islands out there anymore."

This is just the first of other joint conferences for the two companies, both agreed. Unicom '96 is the first step in a "partnership of bigger proportions," Moroney said. Herbert went a little further, saying that although Unicom is just the beginning, Comdex will work with each of MMTA's divisional meetings and two yearly association conferences/trade shows.

Indeed, Comdex plans an announcement "complementary" to the MMTA joint venture within the next few weeks, Herbert said.

Shows that are more like "shopping malls" are becoming the trend, Moroney said. There used to be a fear, especially on the part of associations, that a sponsor would lose its identity if it partnered with others, he said.

However, today's market demands a place where technologies can come together. Even a large event like the upcoming Supercomm has put a focus on "one-stop shopping." This year's show will play host to four pavilions—wireless, fiber, multimedia and software—to reflect the converging industry, said Eric Higgins, public relations manager for Supercomm. Last year, there were only two pavilions.

Vendors' products also reflect the market, with each seeming to have more variety than past years, he said. Buyers, in turn, are shopping for things they haven't in the past.

"The industry is moving so fast, people need to have a place to learn about it all," another Supercomm spokesman added.

Moroney predicted that while the big "mall conferences" proliferate and the small stand-alones find a niche market, the medium-sized conferences that draw from 500 to 1000 attendees will probably have trouble staying viable.

"The Softbank Comdex/MMTA move in the trade show world reflects the convergence and reconfiguration that is currently occurring among vendors, and indeed among entire classes of vendors and service providers/carriers, in the marketplace," Jeff Cotrupe, research manager with Northern Business Information, said. "It will probably result in fewer events, each of which is more worthwhile to exhibitors and attendees."

Both MMTA and Softbank Comdex officials stressed education as a major component of the new Unicom show and any other conference they host together.

With new technologies and new ways to combine old technologies, buyers and users need to keep abreast of new developments. MMTA plans to use Comdex's expertise to recruit computer experts, and Comdex, in turn, will lean heavily on MMTA's bank of telecom knowledge.

Unicom began 15 years ago when MMTA was still known as the North American Telecommunications Association. The last Unicom, held in 1994, drew about 5000 attendees—down from a peak of about 10,000 several years before. Although Moroney had no attendance predictions, old attendance figures are irrelevant because the show focus will be so different, he said.