SAPPHIRE/ASUG09 was energizing as usual – meeting current & prospective customers, meeting partners, and attending selected sessions is always a great learning experience and great way to recharge yourself and your team.
However, this year’s SAPPHIRE was very different from each of last 5 years that I’ve been going there. Maybe as a regular attendee you might have only noticed the small lunches, the lack of any evening reception, and the post-dinner concert, but as a trade-show exhibitor some of the differences this year were very significant. These differences had a major impact for us and will severely affect own return on investment from participating in this show.
First and foremost, the number of attendees were visibly lower than I’ve ever seen. Some were saying the number was down 50% from 2008. We all understand the effect on the macro-economic conditions on trade-shows and conferences.
However, for us, the worst part of the conference was that SAPPHIRE or ASUG management did little to drive any traffic to the show floor. The lunch area to the side did not help. An evening reception during Day 1 would have led to a lot of visitors to our booths -- the visitors are relaxed, not headed anywhere, and could have spend more time having quality conversations with us.
Now, the question for next year is whether we should continue our SAPPHIRE participation at the same level? Should we focus more on the SAP Insider conferences which are a more friendly to exhibitors and the local ASUG chapter meetings and skip SAPPHIRE completely? I know many SAP Partners who did that in 2009.
