Update on AFCOM Data Center World figures

Just now I received a call updating me on the attendance figures from AFCOM’s Data Center World. As it turns out, there were 822 attendees, about 95% of which were end users (that makes about 781 end users, within the 700-800 range I wrote about last week in a post about the AFCOM Data Center World show).

Also, there were 275 exhibiting companies and 345 booths, according to an AFCOM spokesperson. The spokesperson didn’t know how many exhibitor personnel there were. From talking to people from AFCOM and vendors at the show, I heard there were more 900. This makes sense, as it rounds to a little more than 3 people per exhibitor.

I also said in my original post that only one of about a dozen AFCOM board members is an end user. I was wrong. The representatives from Intel and Nortel are data center users that work for vendor companies, and I left them out, so there are actually three end users on the board.

Needless to say, the AFCOM leadership is upset because I said the show was vendor-heavy, but the fact is that it was. Of the 40 educational sessions in four tracks — best practices, data center management, emerging technology, and facilities/greening — 35 were run by vendors or consultants.

In a down economy, I realize there’s a higher chance of there being more vendors than users. But I did hear from users who thought there was too much vendor presence at the show, and not enough end user presence, especially in the educational sessions. I stand by my hope that AFCOM gets more end users to run sessions in future shows.