Sibos Day 4: the end is nigh!

Day 4 of Sibos is a Thursday, which of course means the Thursday-night Sibos party.

It’s also the day for summing-up conversations with the attendees – “Well, what do you think?”  The most-asked question by people there was probably “Have you heard anything new?”, and the most-asked question on the phone by people who weren’t there was “Did I miss anything?”  I can’t remember hearing something really new myself, and didn’t find anyone else who had received any particular enlightenment. 

But it did seem to be one of those periodic years when the organisers adopt a listening mode.  Like the year of “The Heidi Miller Speech”.  This year’s summing-up presentation was very clear, though: the corporate market needs to be addressed.

Again, that’s nothing new.  The same message was there back in 2001, and in the strategy for 2006 (wasn’t the goal to have an additional 17,000 user organisations on-net by now, mainly from the buy-side/corporate environment?).  But we did hear that the aim is to produce next year a lighter-weight means of accessing the service, to make it more attractive to the buy-side/corporate target users.  So we did hear a “call to action” message, as well as one that was “watch this space”.

After spending four days walking round and round the exhibition area, you think that you’ve eyeballed everyone attending the event at least once.  Come Party Night, you realise that one heck of a lot of bankers have been avoiding the exhibition area like the plague.  They may have bundled in for the free-drinks sessions that the banks run daily around 4pm, or to queue up for a give-away for their kids.  But come Party Night, all the dudes are on the floor and boogying on down.  Which is probably why the exhibition area stays open on Day 5 – otherwise people would head for home on Thursday evening, and no Party!