When the industry blog Virtualization.info announced its first event, the completely independent Virtualization Congress 2008, back in March, we wrote that it would prove to become one of the most interesting events of the year. The congress was to be held from 14 to 16 October at the ExCel centre in London.
Now it seems the event has been postponed, at least according to the event website. VMblog earlier reported that the event was actually cancelled due to ‘low registration numbers and a tough macro-economic climate’. It couldn’t have helped a lot that there was a similar event going on in London only 2 weeks before Virtualization Congress, namely VM08, which to date has not been cancelled and seems to have much of the same topics and sponsors as the congress did.
We have an e-mail in for a confirmation and more clarity on the matter, we’ll update this post as soon as we get a response.
UPDATE: we got an e-mail back saying “the number of delegates that were registered when we decided to cancel (around 300) was too low to match the sponsors expectations and cover the conference costs expenses. Thus we decided to cancel this edition.”. The event has effectively been postponed, with no clarification on a later date so far.
Whatever the reason may be behind the cancellation / delay, we would like to give Alessandro Perilli, who writes about the industry with great passion and knowledge, a heads-up. Organizing an event of this size is no easy feat. Next to blogging, I organize a conference of my own about the European Web 2.0 industry (Plugg) and I know how stressing it can be and how much effort, time and money goes into the organization prior to the event.
We wish Alessandro all the best for the future.
It really would be a shame if Alessandro cannot get this conference up and off the ground. He had some great sponsors, and a very cool idea around making this conference different from others. And while I haven’t put on a trade show of this size or even smaller, I can only imagine the amount of stress that is involved with getting something like that accomplished.
@David: I completely agree, it would be good for the industry if the event got off the ground.
I agree as well. Alessandro had a unique spin on the marketplace with this conference, and I hope it eventually comes together.
A real shame indeed (for him as it must have cost this guy a lot and also affect his reputation and credibility). When financial markets are taking a massive beatings and companies (small and big) are sending out memos to cut costs, yet another conference is really not necessary.
Go and do a Google search for independent advice and articles. tell those cheap interns to do a research for you, they really dig some cool data for you.
Agreed, hats off to Alessandro for creating the event and we look forward to a new date being posted soon. Just one suggestion though, we had a lot of clients who thought the price was way off; almost the cost of VMworld is on the high side when it is the 1st conference and essentially all the sponsors are trying to sell something. Price point around £300 UK GBP we think would make it more widely appealing, especially when so many budgets are being squeezed.
It is a shame. We were looking forward to this conference. Maybe it can be reborn sometime next year. The market needs more independent conferences on the subject rather than having them all controlled by one entity.