“It’s kind of sad to see a show dying,” remarked one public relations person on the opening day of SIFMA. The most common comment during the event was how the conference had shrunk since last year.
Some of that is simply a function of the economic crisis, said one vendor. Firms are guarding their resources and many decided not to spend their budget on SIFMA. Among the conspicuous missing – Microsoft, SunGard and Thomson Reuters.

Not that New York lacked capital markets events of interest that week. Larry Tabb drew several hundred to an evening seminar at the W on Monday ahead of SIFMA.  SunGard drew several hundred to its own event at the Essex House – it was standing room only during the morning keynote by Silver Lake’s co-founder Chris Hedges. By contrast, the afternoon keynote at SIFMA drew about 150 and more than a few got bored, as I did, during the HP speech and left. One colleague said it just seemed like a sales pitch.
Content has never been a reason to attend SIFMA, although back in the old SIA days it did at least draw keynotes like Sun’s CEO Scott McNealy and Mike Bloomberg.

Smaller focused shows like Russ Flagg and Pete Harris’s series like Java on Wall Street fill the available space at the Roosevelt by offering strong, focused content with strong speaker lists. More focused shows also offer better networking opportunities as well. In fact, Flagg Management is actively courting SIFMA vendors for High Performance on Wall Street with this pitch: “Show your SIFMA products at the 2009 High Performance Computing, Sept 14, featuring HPC, Low Latency, Virtualization and Cloud Computing.”

The breadth of SIFMA’s technology conference may be working against it, and the drinks receptions at end of day are not particularly interesting. The scheduling is also plainly nutty…starting at noon on Tuesday and having an exhibition hall opening Thursday morning, but with no program.
As in the past, the show is still plagued by souvenir collectors with no apparent tie to the industry. One elderly gent has been attending for years, pulling along a wheelie bag to stash any goodies he can find on the stands. Participants like that make the show look like a joke, unless you’re a vendor paying good money for a stand. They probably don’t find it amusing.

One analyst said he was going to try to get a few analysts from other firms to approach SIFMA with suggestions for improving the show.
SIFMA should pay attention. Conferences come and go on a regular basis, and this one looks like it’s on the way out.

Filed under: Technology