This morning I finally got a chance to plan my travel arrangements for Alessandro Perilli's Virtualization Congress, which was supposed take place next week in London, England. When I went to his website, to my surprise I found out that he had canceled his show. According to the vmblog: "Evidently, it is being canceled because of low registration and a tough macro-economic climate. And it's a shame too, because the event was being backed by a number of big names in the industry, with nearly 30 sponsors willing to pony up to help support the show. That's a clear sign that the vendor community is ready for an independent virtualization event, and after listening to the folks on the show room floor at VMworld, attendees are ready for something new and different as well."

I think the reason of "tough macro-economic climate" is absolute total nonsense and it sounds like the famous excuses of the Bush administration. Just a few weeks ago VMworld had 14,000 attendees and more than 300 exhibitors in Las Vegas, a destination city for an international event.

My question is, how on earth did Alessandro ever convince more than 30 companies to sponsor his first-ever show? From the looks of it, this was a one-man show, the attempt of a respected technology blogger, with no serious media organization behind it, and no show production experience in his resume. I am saying this because he was the opening keynote, and he was the center of attention of the event if you look at the website. That's funny :- )

Any technology conference and expo of this size and visibility can only be produced and successfully delivered by a small number of media companies with deep pockets. In the conference business a cancellation usually marks the end of any show. We saw this immediately after 9/11. Most media companies who had scheduled conferences after 9/11 went out of business or were acquired for pennies. Remember Penton Media? Fawcette Technical Publications? 101 Communications?

SYS-CON's 3rd International Virtualization Conference & Expo was larger than any recent Gartner event on a similar topic, with a packed expo floor.

Last June SYS-CON's 3rd International Virtualization Conference & Expo 2008 East in New York City attracted more than 1,200 delegates with a jam-packed expo floor, which made this event larger than any recent Gartner event of its kind. The next scheduled SYS-CON event, the 4th International Virtualization Conference & Expo 2008 West, is on track with similar projected attendance numbers, and will take place as planned on November 19-21, 2008 in San Jose, California. Also, the 5th International Virtualization Conference & Expo 2009 Europe as well as Virtualization on Wall Street Conference & Expo will both take place as scheduled.

Will Virtualization Congress Be the Only Canceled Conference?
I don't think so. Only last week the organizers of a Cloud Computing event in Toronto issued a news release, announcing their cancellation. I am curious to see the developments and news on another Virtualization event that is scheduled to take place in the middle of the upcoming holiday season.

Long story short, a dozen or so small and large conferences will appear together with any new technology, quickly consolidating around one single main industry event. There were more than a dozen AJAX conferences four years ago; now the flagship event that represents the Rich Internet Technology space is AJAX World RIA Conference & Expo and SOA World Conference & Expo is the only leading event in this space for more than 8 years.

Consolidation is natural but this accident and a few upcoming accidents were clearly going to happen. I wish Alessandro all the best. Keep on blogging my friend.