This last week we saw the Business Blogging Conference in its third year of operation have to cancel its planned conference in Chicago.  The conference scheduled for September 17-19, 2007 in the Windy City will be canceled and is now being replaced on their roster by the Web Community Forum in Seattle on December 5-6, 2007.

This actually is not an uncommon problem in the conference and tradeshow world.  Many conferences rely on community support for their participation and attendance.  In this particular instance, the conference’s normal venue was on the West Coast, where many of the technical fields reside and many of the conference attendees resided and worked.  Steve Broback the founder of the conference states:

Despite strong participation from sponsors and our long-time community members, we just weren?t seeing the registrations we hoped for from the local, Chicago-area bloggers and PR/marketing professionals that were required to support the event.

They had the usual suspects as their organizers, speakers, and sponsors, but the community itself failed to support the conference in attendance and community participation.  This can be problematic for conference planners and organizers.  They must set a date certain to make a determination if a conference should go forward taking into consideration many facets such as travel, contracts with vendors and sponsors, and the biggest factor, the bottom line.  If a conference becomes a financial burden on the organizers, there has to be a time when pulling the plug on the idea is the best business decision. Broback goes on to state:

Our conferences have always relied heavily on local participation, and our feeling is that Chicago has been very well served this year by at least two excellent, and very reasonably priced blogger conferences: SOBcon and BlogHer. A third event close on the heels of these other shows is obviously a tough sell. In addition, it?s clear from discussions with local marketers that blogging has normalized and is not the disruptive force it was back in 2004 when we launched the BBS.

Originally, when a conference is in its beginning stages of planning, the idea of the conference may be a hot one, but 6-8 months or even a year down the road, the idea may become stale or the core of the message may be lost do to the next greatest and biggest thing in the niche.  The organizers here seem to intimate that the conference idea has lost its luster over time.  They now have a new idea and focus and the latest in their niche happens to be social networking,.  We’ll see if over time, this idea too becomes old hat and they again change the focus of their event.

The point being, you must have some type of exit strategy for your event.  When will be the point of no return for deciding its fate?  When will you need to determine if the event should go forward?  Keep track of your contracts and agreements with vendors, sponsors, and the location you are holding your event.  When is the optimal time to exit if needed?

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