Your memory’s correct. I might add that we were pretty demanding of the vendors. We made them demonstrate how their product would/wouldn’t solve critical business problems that we knew were difficult for the average vendor to solve. We wanted to force differentiation.

Additionally, we wanted vendors to stay on point for these. I’m sure you can remember how vendors would try to ‘solve’ some other problem than the one we gave them.

Interestingly, I just got several calls from some folks who are interested in seeing folks like you and me dust off the old Spectacular show for a triumphant return.

Take care Jim

A good post indeed. I think that the current format needs to be recognized for what it is: the CEO’s opportunity to define their vision of the problem. This is a market largely driven by potential more than anything else. Analysts and pundits have their opinions about how things ought to be (SaaS must be multi-tenant, Performance and Recruitng is the next big integration etc.) and these shootouts provide a great platform for company leaders to present their own take on these “expert” opinions.

I do like your idea for having a showfloor version of these types of presentations and think that could actually be a great augmentation to the traditional shootout. Perhaps a software “scavenger hunt” could be implemented where customer feedback on participating vendors could be collected and aggregated. This would provide an educational opportunity for everyone’s benefit – customers, vendors and anlalysts alike.

Great post. Better yet, what I would love to see is an existing customer demo how they are actually using the product and discuss the value created and delivered from the vendor. Wishful thinking I suspect, though.

Cheers,
Jason C.