This morning as I was  reading the newswire feeds flashing across my screen, I saw one and clicked on it, “Web Experience Forum 2008 Opens in Boston.” The opening paragraph of the press release continues: “Against a backdrop of economic uncertainty…” which translates to “no one showed up.”

“… the inaugural Web Experience Forum, today opens its doors at the Boston Park Plaza Hotel, Boston. More than 150 business, ecommerce and technology executives are congregating here to learn from peers and industry experts about how to leverage the web experience to enhance business success. And how, especially during challenging economic times, creating and delivering superior web experiences can make the difference between profit and loss.”

Any event whether you call it a Forum, Symposium, Summit, Congress, Expo, Conference, you name it, with 150 registered attendees (50 will show up), will never happen again. Don’t they know their neighbor over in Boston, TechTarget, has been trying for the past couple of years with their “AJAX Experience,” but with no luck. Actually TechTarget does not have one single event in their history that they delivered to a real conference-size crowd.

Good for the Gomez people, whoever they are; they managed this far. The clowns in Toronto (Plum Communications) canceled their November event on Cloud Computing and the Italian blogger Alessandro Perilli canceled his Virtualization Congress with more than 30 sponsors. I am sure the Gomez people tried to do this “inaugural” thing with the hopes of selling something else to the folks who show up. It reminds me “free real estate seminars” at airport hotels.

What really gets me is amateurs blaming it on the economy. The 6^th International AJAX World Conference & Expo, which will take place October 20-22, in San Jose, CA, is doing just fine. The expo floor will be packed, so will the sessions. Well, you never learn unless you try it, right?