DEMA 2009 Attendance Report

Below is a table showing current and historic attendance data for the DEMA Expo as provided by DEMA. I have chosen to remove a couple of columns that don’t interest me that much, so if you want to see the complete table, please use the link below. Also, feel free to click on any column headings to sort.

There were a couple of items I found interesting:

1. The news was first shared via Twitter not by DEMA’s own Twitter account, but by @BizOfDiving on Wednesday. @DEMAShow2009 had actually disappeared from Twitter as of 9:15AM Friday of the DEMA Expo, leaving almost a full two days before the event ended. I don’t point this out so much as to make DEMA look bad, but to make you – the Independent SCUBA instructors and Dive Center Owners – realize that even the “big kids” in the industry are having a hard time understanding these new tools.
   I do like how @DEMAShow2009 returned to plug an article in the Miami Herald using a hashtag that no one had actually used during the event alongside an unshortened URL. (I’ll be teaching you all about URL shortening and hashtags very soon)
2. Total attendees including exhibitors were down from last year by almost 1,500 people. However, non-exhibitor attendees were down less than 800 from last year. I know PADI sent far fewer employees, so I wonder how much of an impact that had. I can imagine the economy driving overall numbers down, but it surprises me a little that exhibitors were down so much yet non-exhibitor attendees were very close to historic numbers.

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What do you think about these numbers?