WCCF (Was: VCF Midwest update?

Conversely, I -- like many of you, probably -- was too young for the original WCCF but attended Comdex during the dot-com heyday. I went every year from 98-2003 (or maybe it was 2002, whichever was the final year). Along with CES in January, Comdex filled up every hotel room in Vegas, had mutliple hundreds (thousands?) of exhibitors, and probably neared 100,000 attendees in its biggest years of the late 1990s/early 2000s. Working for PC Week/eWeek, I got to attend a few of the famous Spencer Katt parties. But in those last two or three years, we all joked that could gauge the show's success by the size of the cab lines, which went from intolerable to a breeze. Sorry for the OT, just reminiscing... -----Original Message----- From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Fred Cisin Sent: Wednesday, August 03, 2005 9:34 PM To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: WCCF (Was: VCF Midwest update? On Wed, 3 Aug 2005, Bob Shannon wrote: West Coast Computer Faire (note the pretentious trailing 'e') was started as an annual event in about 1997? by Jim Warren (think Intelligent Machines Journal, Dr. Dobbs, etc.) He's a big guy, and rolled around the shows on roller skates. There was no significant differentiation between exhibitors, attendees, and staff. The 1st one was San Francisco? (I missed that one) The 2nd one was in San Jose (and resembled VCF) The 3rd one was in Anaheim (and started to look like a trade show) (exhibitors and staff started being differentiated from attendees) The 4th one was in Brooks Hall and Civic Auditorium (SF) (1st one I exhibited at) They also started a spinoff show of "PC Faire" After a bunch of years in Brooks/Civic, filling the whole place, including selling booth space in the balcony of Civic, and in the hallway outside the crappers, Jim sold the show to McGraw Hill. Exhibitors, attendees, and staff became three separate groups. Apple objected to the number of non-Apple booths and pulled out. Some Apple people insist on calling the WCCF "PC Faire", because it was not exclusively Apple. After McGraw Hill mismanaged it for a few years, including trying to hold it in Moscone Hall, they sold the show to Interface Group (Comdex). Staff became a separate entity, with exhibitors and attendees lumped together. If you wanted carpet in your booth, you had to either rent it from the show management for $75 for the weekend, or pay them $75 to unroll yours. We had one nut that wasn't a wing-nut in our booth - it cost us $70 to get caught using a wrench to tighten it. The show got smaller, and almost as expensive as Comdex; exhibitors became disgruntled. Some Apple people boycotted the show, and Apple ONLY shows started up. Show management stopped respecting seniority for booth selection priority. I was tied for #1 on booth selection priority, and had a 10 x 10 corner booth, when they rearranged the floorplan and reassigned all of the space without consultation with exhibitors. The show went under. A number of times, we told Jim Warren that it was time to put the skates back on.