SuperComm returns

After the joint tradeshow agreement expired in 2005, the two industry groups started putting on separate shows. The TIA, which represents telecoms equipment manufacturers called its show Globalcomm, while USTelecom, which is an association for carriers, put on an event called TelecomNEXT. But having two separate shows, with vendors having to split their marketing budgets two ways, didn’t prove to be very popular, so in 2007 the two events got back together under the NXTcomm banner.

NXTcomm wasn’t so hot either, or too hot depending on your perspective. This year it was held in Las Vegas, a town so dangerous that the conference website advised attendees not to set foot anywhere that wasn’t air-conditioned — if you didn’t expire from the heat, you’d either get run-over or shot (at least that was my interpretation). The right choice of venue is clearly an important consideration, with many people saying the show was better when it moved around to be nearer to its target audience.

All of this coincided with a wave of consolidation that swept through the top levels of the telecoms food chain — both carriers and their system vendor suppliers — which put a bit of a dent in attendance figures. Co-locating the show with InfoComm, a trade show for the audio/visual technology market, was supposed to bring more floor traffic into the telecoms industry event, but was it the right kind of traffic?

Some in the industry also wondered whether the scope of the event had simply got too large to be useful. NXTcomm was billed as “one event for the entire ecosystem of network-enabled voice”, giving itself rather a lot to live up to.

Now, show organisers seem to think that focusing on the values that made the event successful in the past could do the trick. They have resurrected the good old SuperComm brand, and have put a modern spin on it. But will it work? If the power of positive thinking is all that’s required, then the event will be huge.

“This change marks a new era for Supercomm. We are re-establishing this event due to popular demand and structuring it to better serve today’s 21st century communications providers and partners. Broadband and the applications and solutions enabled by it hold the key to the future of communications and we are well positioned to meet the needs of this marketplace,” said event organisers in a statement.

Light Reading and Telephony are reporting that Wayne Crawford, who became the show’s executive director early last year, has resigned, and will be replaced on an interim basis or possibly longer, by Jim Forlenza, who was hired last year as NXTComm’s director of public relations and business development.

Supercomm will be held from June 8-11 2009 in Chicago.