MediaLive International announced that COMDEX Las Vegas 2004 has been cancelled in order to reshape the event with the cooperation of information technology industry leaders. The company has established a special advisory board representing a number of industry-leading companies who will determine the future of the show.

One year ago, MediaLive’s management team took ownership of the COMDEX brand and began the process of repositioning COMDEX as a focused, business-to-business IT event. COMDEX 2003 attracted more than 40 000 qualified technology buyers, 550 exhibiting companies and more than 900 journalists. Prior to that a company that managed the Comdex Fall show went out of the business.

“While we could still run a profitable COMDEX this year, it does not benefit the industry to do so without broader support of the leading technology companies. In order to give the Advisory Board the time and opportunity necessary to partake in the redesign of COMDEX, we thought it best to postpone this year's show,” said Robert W. Priest-Heck, president and chief executive officer of MediaLive.

The COMDEX Advisory Board will immediately begin assessing the value of an industry event from the perspective of vendors, buyers, media and others stakeholders; and to recommend modifications to COMDEX that suit the needs of the industry. MediaLive has received commitments to join its COMDEX Advisory Board from: John Volkmann, vice president, strategic communications, AMD; George Paolini, vice president, general manager of developer tools, Borland Software; Mark Fredrickson, vice president corporate communications, EMC; Timothy J. Curran, chief executive officer, Global Technology Distribution Council; Jeff Singsaas, director of events, Microsoft Corp.; Robert Shimp, vice president technology marketing, Oracle Corp.; and Peter Weedfald, senior vice president, strategic marketing and new media, Samsung Electronics. Executives from Cisco, Dell and Intel have also agreed to join the Advisory Board and invitations have been extended to other industry leading companies.

The next COMDEX Las Vegas is scheduled for November 13 - 17, 2005, at the Las Vegas Convention Center. All other events organized by MediaLive will be conveying as planned.