IDG World Expo on Wednesday offered attendance figures (available for download as a PDF file) for January’s Macworld Conference & Expo in San Francisco, Calif. Today’s information shows that total attendance for the event rose more than 11 percent from 2004, from 32,409 attendees to 35,989.
The audit breaks down attendance by five categories: Exhibit Only (28,864), Conference (3,358), Exhibitors (2,485), Speakers (132) and Press (1,150). While the number of exhibitors and speakers dropped slightly year over year, the total numbers of Exhibit Only and Conference attendees, as well as the number of registered press, grew.
Most of this year’s attendees hailed from locations in North America, and the vast majority of them were “local:” 27,743 attendees call California home. Only 1,080 came from international locations.
Thirty percent of all verified attendees left their job title or function undefined when registering. Of those that did, 7.3 percent identified themselves as being involved in graphic design or art; 5.2 percent said they were self-employed; and 4.9 percent identified themselves as CEOs of their company. More than 1,100 attendees indicated they were involved in information technology (IT) or Information Systems (IS) support.
When describing their primary industry, 8.1 percent of all verified attendees said they were employed in design and creative services work; 7.1 percent said they worked in film, video and TV, and 6.8 percent said they worked in photography or digital imaging. Other large percentages included Higher Education (6.2 percent) and K-12 Education (6.1) percent, Web Design (5.7 percent) and Consulting (5.5 percent).
Macworld Conference & Expo is a production of IDG World Expo. Both Mac Publishing LLC and IDG World Expo are business units of International Data Group (IDG). Macworld Conference & Expo’s attendance figures were audited by Exhibit Surveys Inc.