As June's Cybernet Expo was winding down from its Montreal festivities and networking, the fear was that it would be the last Cybernet Expo. That was then, this is now, said organizer Faye Sharp, who is bringing the show back for a June 9-12, 2004 round at the Hyatt Regency Islandia, on the San Diego harborfront.
Citing falling attendance at Cybernet and other adult Internet expositions of late, Sharp told AVN Online at the June show that it wasn't likely the show would return. What a difference two months makes. Barely had the September issue of AVN Online, speaking of the June show and its possible demise, hit the newsracks, when Sharp signed a contract to bring the show back in San Diego next year.
Sharp said talking to people after the Montreal show convinced her to give Cybernet another try.
"I didn't think there would be any more Cybernet," she said August 29. "The economy really sucks, and we had so many problems, we had the war, we had travel advisories, the SARS problem down in Toronto, it was just a little bleak. But I had a lot of people who, when I talked about it, and asked if they'd support it if I did it again, they said oh yes, oh yes."
She said she got more encouragement when she posted a message board notice about Cybernet. "When I posted the article I got a slew of e-mails about 'no, you can't do this'," she said. "So I responded to a lot of them, and I talked to some of the people at the Internext show, and I guess I do have support. So I am going forward."
She jumped a major hurdle when she signed the Hyatt Regency deal. "I'd been working on trying to get beachfront," she said, "but I couldn't find any rooms they'd let me have for less than $200. Then, I started looking at the harbor. And the deal was that if I signed this month, they'd give us the rooms at $100. So I signed."
Details about the Cybernet Expo 2004 won't be coming forth until at least the end of September, Sharpe said, and it will be posted on a new Cybernet Expo Website at that time. But she said "several people" are interested in helping with the show. One thing she does want to do, as far as possible, is bring back some industry players who haven't been making the trade shows of late.
"We're also trying to plan some things that might bring some of the people back that haven't been attending too many shows the last couple of years," she said. "They were kind of burned out on shows, and we're trying to plan something that will interest a lot of those veterans in coming back to the show."
Sharpe has moved toward semi-retirement recently, having withdrawn from her former activity in doing the AdultDex show opposite Comdex in Las Vegas, and sold all her Websites except for Spanky's Content, which "I bought…from the guy who started it in 1998, but I never changed it because it had such a good reputation I didn't want to mess with it."
