RE: This year's MAPICS User conference

["Frank Geric" <fgeric@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Mr. Wolf,
My company has participated in the conference many years and the fees
for vendors have not increased appreciably in the last 5 years (at
least). I cannot speak for MAPICS', but I do know there have been issues
in the past with vendors that behaved "less than reputably". In some
instances they were disseminating very errant information regarding
various MAPICS modules and other competitive 3rd party packages. MAPICS,
I believe, made this move in the interests of protecting their partners
and customers, as well as their own interests. I am not aware of how
many vendors are registered for this years conference. 

It will be interesting to see how many attendees are at the event this
year - the last time it was held in Chicago it broke all records for
attendance.  I do not anticipate this being the case, but we shall see -
don't forget there will be some FrontSteppers in the mix this year.
Hope this helps,
Frank

   
   cost the vendor to be at the conference.  It is not cheap!  I thought
   MAPICS would be very open to have as many vendors as possible so that
the
   Users could see all the neat things that exist for the MAPICS
community.
    
   It looks like they are now going to limit the Vendors to ONLY those
that
   have a "partnership" agreement with them AND they will only be able
to
   demonstrate "approved" products.  So I guess if they have something
that
   competes with them, you cannot see it.  So long to free enterprise!
So
   smaller 3rd Party Vendors that do not have this "certified product"
or
   this commission kickback will not be at this year's conference.  How
many
   vendors will be there this year?
    
   Why can't they be like JDE and allow whoever wants to come?  I read
   somewhere that they had a few thousand visitors to there last
conference. 
   How many were at ours - about 1000.