Quote Originally Posted by Dzinerbear View Post
Patrick Curran started the ccbill Gay Phoenix Forum, Patrick Curran left ccbill for Epoch, now Epoch and others have announced a new show in the same month as ccbill's. Tacky, tacky, tacky.
I really dont think that Epoch or Patrick had anything to do with the dates, bearing in mind that last time AVN did this Pat was still working at CCBill.

Personally i think the powers that be at AVN have lost sync with the industry and that Paul is trying to grab as much money from the industry as possible, that is the only reason why i can think of to have their thing in Feb which was billed in part i seem to recall as a 'webmaster' event and to have another in October.

Paul F has realized that the straight side of the industry are no longer interested in attending the Internext shows as they are unproductive for them, and it would also appear based on that article Ken wrote about this years Florida show, that the gay webmaster community is also quickly coming to the same conclusion as our straight counterparts have.

Shows just arent profitable to attend or sponsor anymore, im trying to remember when it was, i think about 2-3 years back we saw a major shift in the sponsorship and attendance patterns from several of the large industry players, ARS and MaxCash dropped their GameWorks events completely and even consolidated their show floor attendance and presence, CE dropped their usual larger than life show floor presence, SicCash, SilverCash, PlatinumBucks, TrafficCashGold, the list really does go on and on.

Yet at the same time, these exact same companies who started to consolidate their major tradeshow spending, started expanding their presence and attendance to the smaller, less formal gatherings, Phoenix, San Diego, Toronto, Curacao.

AVN are basically trying to remain profitable and still manage their tradeshows however, they realize that what they have been doing for the last X amount of years no longer working, but because they have lost touch with the industry, they dont know what works so they have to duplicate the successes of others, and charge attendees for all their hard work in duplicating the successes of others.

The industry has changed in the last 5 years, AVN has been told this on numerous occasions, by numerous people, on numerous boards, they chose not to listen, now they are feeling the effects of not listening to what they were told.

Regards,

Lee