PatternMusic Blog

Image credit: giovanni gallucci | social media expert - Creative Commons Licensed

I read arguments that Macworld Expo is destined to go the way of the dodo. The claim is that without Apple and big-name exhibitors, and without Steve’s famous keynote that the institution is irrelevant in our non-stop twittering economy where no one has time or the funds to stop the noise for some face-to-face between product developers and actual human customers.

Macworld has never been the same as industry and press-only trade shows like CES or NAMM. It is an end-user show — it’s really the scion of the consumer-oriented West Coast Computer Faire where, one can argue, the personal computer was born.

I’ve been attending and exhibiting at Macworld since they first started holding MacWorld in 1985. First as a Mac enthusiast; then as a Mac product developer (we built a hard drive for pre-SCSI, pre-HFS 128K and 512K Macs – “K” as in kilobytes!!); then as an Apple-spawned CLARIS software developer; then as an Apple engineer. Recently, as an independent software developer, and coming full circle, as a Mac, iPod and iPhone enthusiast.

For me, the interesting stuff at Macworld was never the big booths. (Although, they were always good for providing comfy chairs.) The interesting stuff at Macworld has always been the little discoveries you find around the edges – the card table booths, the mom-and-pop startups doing something completely crazy or unique. I’ve seen many, many of those little edge discoveries go on to become pillars of the Mac and tech economy.

This year I’m going to be exhibiting at Macworld as an independent iPhone app developer. I’m quite excited. IDG has made it very attractive for iPhone developers to exhibit this year.

Clearly no one needs Macworld to see and touch Apple’s products. They have glossy stores all over the place that do a great job of that. And really do you need Macworld to see what iPod peripherals Griffin is offering this year? No, just visit www.griffintechnology.com if that’s all you need.

What we need MacWorld for is to discover those cool edge apps and applications that you never imagined existed. We need Macworld to put a human face on Apple’s world.  Just because we have news and product information thrown at us 24-hours-a-day no matter where we are, I don’t see why having a little actual contact between customers and developers or manufacturers could be any less valuable than it’s ever been.

Hopefully, this isn’t the end, and that Macworld can figure out how to continue to be an important venue for discovery and interaction like it always has been.