Perhaps the best two trade shows in the world today are Pulver's VON shows and Jupitermedia's Search Engine Strategies.

The point of this post is the amazing story behind Jeff Pulver and his shows. I met Jeff in 1996 at Spring Internet World in San Jose, California. At the time he was working on Wall Street, but his love was Internet connectivity and Voice Over IP (Internet Telephony). Jeff ultimately started pulver.com and the VON shows. These shows grew slowly, but then accelerated to the point that on September 10, 2001, Key3Media paid Jeff $65 million for the VON shows.

Note the date: great timing for Jeff, bad timing for Key3Media (now MediaLive).
Fast forward to early 2003. Key3Media goes into bankruptcy. Thomas Wiesel Partners throws in $130 million or so to bring Key3Media out of bankruptcy and decides (along with management) to sell the VON shows back to Jeff Pulver for $5 million!!!!!

Fast forward to today: MediaLive runs a variety of shows. None of these shows are close to the size they were three years ago --- in fact some are on their last legs and others have been "suspended." And what about the VON shows? They are probably worth north of $30 million if not more.

Need I say more.