>That's why I'd like to see attendance numbers for the other popular development tools also. There are many factors having an impact on attendance-not the least is travel fear and travel expenses. My parent company cancelled all training for the fiscal year and we have thousands of employees. Luckily no one has been laid off though--instead, they held pay increases to 2.5% - pretty good considering! The economical impact as well should have an effect on ALL conferences. It would be interesting to know the percentage drop in attendance for many of the conferences and of course those that had an increase (why?).

Another factor is the number of conferences in a year. I figure that just a few dozen people attend more than two in any year, and these are probably speaking at least on one of them (but may be just attendees at another). How many Fox conferences did we have in 1999? In 1993?