Discovery ’09, the fourth annual exhibition and conference sponsored by the Ontario Centres of Excellence in Toronto in mid-May, was interesting in several ways.
It brought together a wide range of advanced technology, from a system that could interpret hand movements and use them as input (demonstrated with a driving game where players steered by moving their hands as if they were handling an imaginary steering wheel) to a company in the early stages of developing dramatically more efficient solar cells to one working on software-driven glasses to ease vision problems. It also featured the announcement of a global architectural competition that will award a prize for the best “re-skinning” of a building to improve its energy efficiency.
Not all of this, admittedly, will interest those in the IT channel business. Who cares about energy-efficient buildings or advances in alternative energy and health care, you may be saying – we’ve got to move these laptops.
What seems more interesting from a computer industry viewpoint is this. For the past year or so there has been one common thread linking all the computer-industry shows I’ve attended, and it’s not something any of us in the industry particularly wants to see. They’ve all shrunk. Show floors are smaller – in some cases dramatically so – and conference programs have often been scaled back.
This pattern probably isn’t entirely universal, but it has certainly been apparent in many recent events.
The point is, Discovery ’09 was a notable exception. Not having attended this particular event for a couple of years I can’t compare with last year, but organizers made the point that the entire show floor of the inaugural event four years ago would have fit into the seating area used for this year’s opening session and keynotes. The show floor was large by the standards of today’s Canadian technology shows, and the event was sold out.
Why the difference between Discovery 09, which focuses on a broader range of technology including environmental technology or “clean tech” (the biggest area at this year’s show) and health-care technology (the second biggest area) as well as IT (the smallest area)?
It would be wrong to put it down entirely to one thing. Many exhibitors were companies receiving funding or other aid from the Ontario Centres of Excellence, others were universities working with the organization. There was – more than one exhibitor said so – significant pressure from OCE to exhibit at the show. Still other exhibitors were companies offering services to technology start-ups. They were probably the ones with most to gain from being there.
But if IT shows in general are shrinking while an event with a broader focus on areas such as environmental and health-care technologies is growing, the conclusion is inescapable, isn’t it? The excitement in the IT business isn’t what it once was.
And from looking around the Discovery 09 show floor, the sense is that the impact of what innovation exists is not what it is in areas such as clean tech and health-care technology.
Entrepreneurs in those fields are tackling issues that really matter to everyone. Meanwhile one booth that caught my eye in the “digital zone” at Discovery 09 – and I admit it’s unfair to take this a representation of the whole IT sector – was promoting online dating. Maybe the IT industry needs more focus on real problems.
