Architosh Staff ([email protected])

16 July 2004

 

Expo: Architosh Recaps on Boston Macworld Expo

Annual East Coast Show Gets Back to Boston in New Digs

The East coast installment of the IDG produced Macworld Expo event was very much scaled back this year due to Apple's unwillingness to attend the show. Housed in a gorgeous new state-of-art conference facility this year's Macworld Expo easily fit into one sixth of the floor space within the center. Unlike New York and San Francisco's venues this new conference center could easily house the entire show's exhibition within one main continuous space. From an architectural and planning point of view Boston's new conference and exhibition center is a superior facility on numerous levels compared to other venues for Macworld. It is a shame that Apple is dead set against Bean Town as a place to host an event for its East coast users because this facility has so much to offer the annual show.

Enticing Apple To Come Back Home to Boston

Clearly a superior conference and exhibition facility is not enough to entice Jobs & Co. to come back to Bean Town. The politics and infighting over the show between Apple and IDG has been well publicized. However, it's time to move forward for both companies to do what is best for Macintosh users living on the East coast. Apple is clearly doing more harm than good by choosing to not serve its customers living on the Atlantic side of this country. The fighting needs to stop.

Why Boston Could Work

It is clear to me that New York was a better show venue than the older split venue system of Macworld Boston years ago, but after seeing the new Boston Convention and Exhibition Center (BCEC) Boston is now the better place to hold a computer conference event like this. For starters, the new BCEC has a better public interface with the city from the perspective of public relations. Secondly, the new center is very dramatic architecturally and makes a better overall impression. When you enter the new BCEC from the front you approach the exhibition floor space directly in front of you but at a lower level. As you walk up to a huge wall of glass a dramatic vista or unfolding of the long exhibition space awaits your eyes below. From this dramatic perch you could imagine Apple taking up a very dramatic position front and center -- like some heroric general leading his troops into battle. What a great photo this would make! It was vivid in my mind as I walked around the facility.

Apple needs to also realize that this new center is far superior for the event from the logistics of the conference sessions. Unlike New York, the conference rooms flank the long and vast exhibition hall on each side. The whole thing is much more tidy and organized. The building has an almost organic quality to it the way it resonates with this type of program -- a computer conference event.

Science, Engineering and CAD

While Boston is not the creative capital of America like New York is, it is arguably the intellectual capital. With its renowned research hospitals and premier universities like Harvard and MIT, this is a place where the term "Think different" is part of the cultural norm. Boston and Cambridge is where science in America happens. The area is the leading bio-technology hub in the United States and route 128 -- that high-tech suburan ring that wraps Boston metro -- recently overtook Silicon Valley as the leading technology investment center in the country.

With such a cultural focus, science, medicine and engineering could be a major theme of a Boston show for Apple. This could be the event where Apple introduces next-generation Xserves, bio-clusters, Xgrid technologies and other high-performance computing initiatives and technologies. And Boston is also home to some of this nation's leading architectural firms and some of the country's leading CAD, MCAD and engineering software companies. As this site has proclaimed for quite some time now, the CAD and engineering software markets are ripe areas for Apple market share growth.

What I am suggesting is that the Boston Macworld Expo be different -- that Apple think of it as an opportunity to focus on professional markets where the company has both had excellent traction and where it can focus on new growth opportunities. What I am suggesting too is that Apple focus on the fact that the Boston area is where many of the nation's leading thinkers are and that they leverage them in their own backyard.

Dream Scenario for Boston Macworld 2005

Imagine this scenario for next year. Jobs reads this article and changes his mind. IDG reads this article and says, "exactly"! So Apple comes and so does everyone else. But this Macworld Expo would be different. It would have science and technology component to it that would be a major deal.

There would be biotechnology computing conference sessions. Companies serving the software and hardware interest in biotechnology -- many of them are nearby -- would be on the show floor. Apple would also show off its technical prowess by setting up a tiny version of super computer clusters and demonstrating to the public how great technology is working to solve problems that confront the lives of all people.

Apple would also

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