Tikkabik

So as you've noticed, I've laid low this week for blogging, and it's because I've spent the week at Macworld Expo in Boston. Let me speak frankly: Going into this, I had very limited expectations because of all the factors that were working against it. Apple's absence, the absence of some big-name vendors, less than stellar news coverage leading into the show, and other issues seemed to weigh against Macworld Expo Boston's return.

Now that it's over, however, I'm feeling more more positive. Measuring a show's influence or success by the size of its exhibit hall is no more meaningful than measuring the quality of a car just by the raw horsepower of its engine. Sure, it gives you an overall idea of how powerful the vehicle is, but if it's a rickety bucket of bolts otherwise, you're not going to have a quality ride.

To that end, Macworld Expo was good. Almost every conference I saw was packed with people -- especially the "Power Tools" sessions and other events that drew out power users and professionals who were here to learn and gain new knowledgea bout how their computers work and how best to leverage the power of Mac OS X and the applications they depend on to do their work.

"Quality" is a word that was used a lot when I talked with vendors who did buy exhibit hall space. While some felt that more people should have attended and remarked that Apple's absence undoubtedly hurt that, many many people I spoke to appreciated the quality of the customer who they were talking with and the quality of the experience itself. The smaller show floor and crowds enabled what one vendor described as the ability to "dig deeper" to find out what his users -- and potential users -- were looking for in their products.

To that end, I think the face-to-face time a show like this affords is invaluable to the industry, and I don't think that the immediacy of Internet-based news and press is bound to erase that any time soon. Sure, 50,000 people don't come to these events anymore, but many of them don't need to come. The ones that do, however, seemed to have gotten a lot out of it.