In AVN's defense, historically, the DVD studios and the affiliate programs have been mostly unrelated entities, and to a large extent that's still the case. Look at Raging Stallion, Chi Chi, Bel Ami, and Falcon, for example. All are known for their DVD products, rarely advertise or promote their web-based offerings, and rarely have reps on the boards.
The GayVNs are primarily intended to honor DVD studios and performers primarily known for their work in DVDs.
Likewise, Phoenix Forum has its history as an event for webmasters and affiliate programs. You don't typically see much presence from the large DVD producers there.
So arguably, the GayVNs probably wouldn't draw much away from Phoenix Forum.
Of course, it does make sense to try and get the two communities together, and some companies (ours is a pretty good example) are pretty much equally grounded in both sides of the business. To its credit, AVN has tried more than once to bring the two communities together, but without much success... the grand plan to schedule Internext and AEE simulataneously was a disastrous flop, mostly due to the congestion from CES. And I think AVN's attempt with the summit was the same idea, to appeal to both webmasters and studios... but they priced it wrong, didn't listen to the input they were getting, and did a lot of other things that simply didn't work for affiliates and smaller studios.
I'm in complete agreement that AVN's choice to allow itself to be strongarmed by Cybersocket into planning their October event directly against Gay Phoenix Forum was wrong. And I really don't think Epoch knew what they were getting into; let's not forget that somebody at Epoch made the boneheaded decision to pay a ton of money to Cybersocket on the mistaken belief that Cybersocket could actually deliver the gay webmaster community, and I don't think that Epoch realized what the webmaster community really thinks of Cybersocket.
However, I think with the GayVNs, they're really more focused on the DVD studios, and I think the impact on gay attendance at Phoenix Forum will be minimal. Would it be better if they scheduled it a little further away from Phoenix Forum? Definitely. And perhaps they'll listen next year. But the bottom line is, people will vote with their feet, and I don't think there's much argument that people who attend the awards do so for one reason, while people go to Phoenix Forum for a completely different reason.
