Thank You MacWorld Boston, You Will Be Missed

On Friday, September 16th IDG World Expo announced that MacWorld Expo Boston has been cancelled. It is a sad day in the Mac community.

I began attending MacWorld in Boston in 1987. Unfortunately I have not been able to attend MacWorld Expo San Francisco. I know I’m truly missing a grand event in San Francisco and perhaps fate will allow me to attend some time in the future.

I consider myself very fortunate to experience the Boston shows. We all remember the hot, humid August days, the traffic, and the commuting between the two Expo sites - the World Trade Center (Boston) and Bayside Expo. I remember people bungee jumping from a crane. A friend of mine said it was the scariest thing he had ever done. I also remember the keynotes, especially when Steve Jobs returned and Bill Gates joined the keynote via teleconference. The announcements of the new partnership between the two organizations made headlines in papers around the country in 1997. Ironically, that was the last Boston MacWorld until 2004.

I thoroughly enjoyed the return of MacWorld Boston in 2004. The new convention center was enormous. Unfortunately, the number of vendors was limited, however, there were meetings galore. I was able to attend the keynote, “The Macintosh at 20 – The Celebration of 20 Years of Innovation. The keynote was hosted by the always-entertaining David Pogue. The original Mac development team appeared on stage and told tales of the early days. I bought a DVD of keynote and will hold on to it forever.

Bmac, Boston Macintosh User Group, was able to participate in the user group booth. It was refreshing to see so many people interested in a local user group. On Tuesday night in 2004 Bmac held its July monthly user group meeting at MIT and received a great turnout. The speaker for the evening was an Apple Engineer who was on vacation. This was quite a coup since Apple was not at the show.

The 2005 MacWorld Boston was another memorable event. I attended the MAC IT conferences and significantly participated in Bmac user group booth. While the show was small, spirits were high and I was able to meet and speak to numerous industry pundits, e.g., Chris Breen, Bob LeVitus, Andy Itnotko, Jason Snell and Adam Engst. This year Bmac was able to obtain meeting space at the show so Bmac held its July meeting at the show. The speaker was Adam Engst of TidBITs fame and again, we had a great turn out.

I would like to take a moment to thank everyone involved with MacWorld, especially Sarah Hindmarsh of IDG Expo, who’s hard work and support of Bmac will always be appreciated. I would also like to thank all of the speakers and vendors for their contributions. And finally, I would like to thank all of the MacWorld Boston attendees throughout the years for your continuous support and love of the Macintosh community.

Thank you MacWorld Boston, I’ll miss you.