Gossip

Count them twice: Symbian "delegates" proliferate at show

Our Sniffer wanted to know how many delegates there really were at the Symbian developer conference this week. Officially, it's "between 1,500 and 1,700," said one of the organisers. Well ...

What is a "delegate" to a conference? And how many delegates were there at the Excel centre this week?

Fewer than people think. I have the evidence.

In my role as wainscote-prowler, I was fascinated to notice an odd phenomenon at Symbian's prestigious developer conference. Not what you might think; the exhibition centre down in Docklands may be remote, but it is pretty, and has all mod cons (see our other story. No, it was when I started counting badges.

Well, normally, the conference is divided into hierarchies. There are the "delegates" - people who pay a fortune, and get into the conference sessions. And then there are the "exhibitors" who stand around on new carpet and get varicose veins. And finally, at the bottom of the heap, are the despised Third Estate - Sniffers and Kewneys and the like, wearing badges marked "Press" and I suppose one has to mention those figures of fun, the guys with "Speaker" but we can safely ignore most of them - everybody else does.

Exhibitors have privileges; they get in early, stay late, and get drunk on their booths. Except -- I couldn't help noticing -- there were astonishingly few such badges in the Excel centre.

Packets were sniffed. "Oh, yes," confessed one booth-bunny, "we're only allowed one Exhibitor badge per stand. The rest of us are wearing Delegate badges."

There were about 50 booths. Average population of booth-bunnies per booth was around five to ten warm bodies.

Subtract at least 250 from the headcount of "delegates," guys ...