RE: OT : Conference sponsorship

*puts marketing hat on*

As someone who is part of the team that decides where and when we spend our marketing dollars (and as a Collaborate '06 exhibitor), there's definitely some sponsor fatigue out there with the very large shows. As a vendor, there's a couple of criteria that defines where you exhibit. In no particular order, its:

• Attendees who are your product's target market
• Reasonably priced
• Proximity to major sales markets
• Opportunity for booth size, location, etc.

So, for us, we are not exhibiting at Oracle world this year because in recent years, we've found that the show has grown too big. Not only has our target market been diluted by applications folks, etc., but there's so much competition for booth space that we would have to pay top dollar for a lousy space in a poorly trafficked area. However, Collaborate is interesting for us because its our target market, reasonably priced, and we have a great location.

Now, whether this should matter at all to you folks is a subject for debate, but I think it should. After all, the exhibit hall is for helping you get the opportunity to browse through offerings through a bunch of companies, many of which you may not have heard of, in a short amount of time. When you have situations where it's the same 70 companies that have seniority for the good/large booth locations, small-to-mid size companies get squeezed out. I know a number of small companies that are passing on oracleworld this year for these reasons, and in the end, it just dilutes the value of oracleworld further.

But, I'm looking forward to Collaborate. I'll be there for the Tuesday afternoon and weds. day exhibit hall sessions, so stop by and say hi!

Thanks,
Matt

--
Matthew Zito
Chief Scientist
GridApp Systems
P: 646-452-4090
mzito_at_gridapp.com
http://www.gridapp.com

-----Original Message-----
From: oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org [mailto:oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org] On Behalf Of Stephane Faroult
Sent: Friday, April 21, 2006 2:18 PM
To: ORACLE-L
Subject: OT : Conference sponsorship

Listers,

   Disclaimer: I don't intend to ignite a heated discussion about the suitability of a particular product to sustain this or this type of application ...

I discovered by chance that two conferences are taking place at about the same time (well, I knew about one ... but I am going to neither).
I found the comparison of the respective lists of sponsors and exhibitors interesting:

http://www.ioug.org/collaborate06/vendor/currentsponsors.cfm
http://www.mysqluc.com/pub/w/45/exhibitors.html

It is true that the multiplication of Oracle events (in particular the ubiquitous "Oracle World" high mass) has led to a kind of sponsor fatigue, or perhaps more exactly that sponsors have had to make choices


- not yet the case with MySQL.


Stéphane Faroult




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