The show must go on

If only the somber pall cast over this week’s Networld+Interop Fall trade show in Atlanta were simply the consequence of a financially troubled industry. If only the sparse attendee numbers and the masses of people leaving the show early could be blamed simply on shrinking travel budgets. If only the lines of people going into CNN Center across from the Georgia World Congress Center were simply a throng of eager tourists awaiting the CNN studio tour. If only these things were true, we could spark a lively debate here about what’s wrong with this trade show, what it lacked.

But there are no simple truths this week. TVs in thousands of hotel rooms throughout Atlanta this morning voice not the latest business news of financially deficient telecom companies or ethically corrupt CEOs, but the names of the dead. It’s a solemn testimony that must force N+I attendees to ask themselves why they are here this week rather than at home with their families or back at the home office doing more productive things than wishing they were not here.

It is clear by the half-full keynote sessions and the handful of exhibitors that are actually locking up their booths and going home early that N+I should have been cancelled this week. You can argue for the resiliency of Americans and American businesses, and that we must show terrorists they cannot bring this country to a halt, but in a time when the economic resiliency of our industry and our country already is battered, those arguments are forcing us to stretch ourselves too thin in ways mental, emotional and financial.

The buzz at N+I this week, the big news of the show, is that there is no buzz, there is no news. Keynoters such as Robert Shaner, president of wireless operations at Cingular Wireless, are using their stage time to plead for Wall Street to re-adjust the value expectations that have been placed on companies, or for regulators to be lenient to the large-scale service provider consolidation that must continue to happen to create larger, financially healthier companies. They offer no new arguments and no new answers to the industry’s most persistent questions.

If innovation can save the industry, if innovation is the core thing to which we can all return to prove how necessary this industry is to our national economy and our global society, no one is answering the call to arms this week. But it could also be the wrong week to be looking for an answer.

The imminent danger is to view this lack of response as another show gone sour, another forum which has lost the energy to engage us. As people left the show early this week, there was a rumor floating around that N+I may not have a fall event next year.

That could be as big a mistake as it was to let the show go on this week. It is the wrong time for show organizers, exhibitors and attendees to be taking the temperature of this show. Despite the fact that N+I is somber this week, its combination of a heavy enterprise focus with carrier recognition that the enterprise business is exactly where it needs to be could make this show vibrant again. Its traditional and potential cross section of patrons represents the telecom industry’s brightest potential market and the area most ripe for service and technology innovation.

During a week in which N+I lies mournfully dormant, what remains most obvious is that the show deserves another chance. If innovation will save the industry, then innovate and come back ready to talk about it next year. N+I is where we should all be, even if it’s not where we should be this week.