Intel playing only to top IDF crowd this year

The world’s largest chip maker is only hosting three of its popular Intel Developer Forums (IDF) this year in an attempt to rein in costs and resources associated with the event.

It’s a big change. Intel hosted more than a dozen IDFs last year, its biggest year ever for the event. Locations included traditional venues in the U.S., China, Taiwan, and India, but also included Brazil, Russia, and Egypt. Mexico City would have been added this year if the chip maker hadn’t decided to pull back on the forums.

This year only the strong survived. Beijing, San Francisco, and Taipei are the three locations that have supported two IDFs per year for the past few years, each attracting over 4,000 core attendees per year, said David Dickstein, an Intel spokesman that has worked at every IDF since 1998, at that time the conference’s second year.

The three locations also hold business importance. The U.S. and China are Intel’s two largest markets, in that order, and China is its fastest growing market. Taiwan is a vital location for PC component suppliers and hardware makers, many of which Intel needs to work closely with to ensure they’re on board with the compatibility, technology, and supply necessary to keep up with its microprocessors. The microprocessor is just the engine of a PC, and the surrounding parts need to work with the engine or the entire device won’t operate properly.

The choice of cities shows that Intel has a keen understanding of politics in Asia, and its own importance as a global technology company. Or the company may simply have been lucky. Intel did an admirable job of skirting a potential political landmine by hosting IDFs in both Beijing and Taipei this year, even though it insists its decisions on IDF locations are not based on politics, but simply on where the developers are.

People from both locations place great weight on their international standing, and major events such as IDFs are seen as a sign of their own importance in the technology sector. Dropping one location and keeping the other would have been seen as a painful slight. When Intel first decided to host an IDF in China in 1999, for example, newspapers throughout Taiwan labeled it yet another example of how the global PC industry was deserting the island in favor of China.

Dickstein said that the rivalry between Beijing and Taipei played no role at all in Intel’s decision to keep IDFs in both places this year.

“There’s not been one time when there has been political pressure to hold an IDF in a certain location,” he said.

The political sensitivity in Asia shows that IDF has grown into one of the most important technology events in the world in its short life. Intel’s global clout, combined with a propensity to release major technology news and products, as well as keynote speeches by top executives and attendee access to company engineers to tackle technology problems have ensured the forum has grown as a major technology event each year.

It started from humble beginnings in Silicon Valley, as many technology stories do. IDF opened in 1997 to 200 attendees at a hotel in San Francisco. The second IDF was held later the same year, just a short ride south to Burlingame. In all, 1,000 engineers and customers went to IDF that year, a tiny sum compared to the 29,000 attendees last year, at locations all around the world.

Intel was quick to expand outside of U.S. borders. Just a year after the first IDF, the company added two overseas locations, Tokyo and Taipei.

“Nothing beats being there,” said Dickstein, adding that few international visitors attended IDF in the beginning. The two Asian cities drew about 500 participants each.

“It really was where we felt the developers would be,” Dickstein said of the locations.

Analysts say that there appears to be little downside for Intel in slashing the number of IDFs. Despite the change from hosting the forum in multiple cities last year to just three this year, Intel will probably be able to keep up with developers and customers with Internet training and technical help, according to Nathan Brookwood, principal analyst at Insight64. And the company stands to save money because IDFs are expensive to host, he added.

“When IDF started (in 1997) things were changing rapidly in the industry, and the two shows per year [in the U.S.] made sense. For the past few years, the pace of new technology introductions has slowed,” he said.

This year, the company expects 4,500 core attendees at the Beijing event alone, which runs Tuesday and Wednesday. It’s the only IDF in the first eight months of this year.

The San Francisco IDF is slated for September 18 and 19, while Taipei is scheduled for October 15 and 16.