We had a great Macworld this year and it was our most successful Macworld ever. We took a gamble this year. We decided to change the purpose of our Macworld investment from a “demo and sales” event to a “networking & training” event.
The original purpose of trade shows has been replaced by the web. Now, if you want to learn about new stuff, you track sites that deliver that kind of news, then visit the company web site to learn the details (and potentially try the product) — all without leaving your computer. No need to travel. I believe the new purpose of trade shows is “training” and that is exactly what we did. Each session was a max of 30 minutes and we had some special guests:
- Frank Blome, CEO of ProjectWizards, makers of the award-winning Merlin project management tool. He showed how to leverage the integration between Merlin and Billings
- Dax Dasilva, CEO of Xsilva, makers of LightSpeed, a super sophisticated point of sales system. He showed how to combine LightSpeed and Daylite using the new connector
- Grant Cowie, CEO of Cognito, makers of MoneyWorks, seriously good accounting software. He showed how to leverage MoneyWorks and Daylite together using the new connector
- Joshua Paul, President of Neocode, makers of specialized FileMaker solutions. He showed how to leverage the new FileMaker connector to move data back forth between FileMaker and Daylite
You can see our full schedule on our 2008 Macworld page. It was a great success and I’m trying to convince a few companies to do the same kind of thing next year. I think we can deliver real value this way, and convince more people to come to Macworld.
I wish we had pictures of when the booth was super busy. We are also missing pictures of Frank doing the Merlin & Billings integration session. We’ll try to take better pictures next time.
Preparing for Macworld is always hell, but when you get there and meet your customers & partners face to face, you forget the months of preparation.
Until next time…
AJ
