Macworld Boston Cancelled -- Our friends at MacCentral reported news that comes as no surprise: IDG World Expo has cancelled Macworld Expo Boston and will be concentrating efforts on Macworld Expo San Francisco in January. As we've noted in our coverage of recent Macworld Expo events in both Boston and New York, the attendance simply wasn't there to qualify the show as a Macworld Expo. The demise of the Boston show was the result of a domino effect starting with IDG World Expo's decision several years back to move Macworld Expo from New York City back to Boston. That decision caused a highly publicized spat with Apple, which then refused to attend Macworld Boston and also pulled out of the quickly cancelled Macworld Expo Tokyo. To this day, it's unknown if Apple would have continued to exhibit had Macworld Expo remained in New York, since the company prefers to schedule and control its own product announcements, rather than have them set in stone a year in advance. Without Apple and expected product announcements, both individuals and members of the media chose not to attend, which in turn caused many exhibitors to rethink the value of a booth, given the still-high costs of exhibiting. Despite IDG World Expo's efforts to keep the show relevant with plenty of conference sessions and special booths, the feedback loop of an ever-shrinking show put the final nail in Macworld Boston's coffin. At least we still have San Francisco.

<http://www.macworld.com/news/2005/09/16/boston/>
<http://db.tidbits.com/article/08178>
<http://db.tidbits.com/article/07952>
<http://db.tidbits.com/article/07746>
<http://db.tidbits.com/article/07747>
<http://db.tidbits.com/article/07279>
<http://db.tidbits.com/article/07127>
<http://db.tidbits.com/article/06966>

That's not to say that small trade shows don't still have a place. On 01-Oct-05, the North Coast Macintosh Users Group will be hosting the one-day Macintosh Computer Expo 2005, complete with 24 exhibitors, a slate of talks by the same experts who speak at other industry events, and an anticipated attendance of more than 1,000. It runs from 9:30 AM through 3:30 PM at the Santa Rosa Junior College in Santa Rosa, CA, and although it's free, you'll have to pay $3 to park. Not bad for a day of Macintosh fun and education. And then there's the Central Valley MacFair on 22-Oct-05 in Fresno, CA, put on by the Fresno Macintosh Users Group. It's likely to be smaller, but with many of the same kinds of events and classes. Small shows like these are of course primarily of interest to local Mac users (which is why we don't usually publicize them in TidBITS, given that almost none of our readers would be able to attend), but they serve a useful role for those people who can make it so I hope we see additional regional shows appearing around the world. We're always happy to help support such user group-oriented shows with copies of the full Take Control Library to raffle off, as we're doing for these two events. [ACE]

<http://www.ncmug.org/mce.html>
<http://www.fresnomug.com/macfair.html>