YNOT – The 2010 version of The Phoenix Forum wrapped up on Saturday Night at the Tempe Mission Palms in Tempe, Arizona. After three days of beautiful Arizona spring weather and the generous hospitality of online payment processor CCBill, the show’s host, it was a drag to climb onto a Southwest Airlines flight back to Houston, back to the office, and back to work.Thanks are due to both CCBill and to the sponsors of the 2010 Forum for treating everyone to a great business opportunity.
For many attendees of The Phoenix Forum like myself, the event is simply the perfect business networking experience. If you haven’t been to the Forum before, one of the show’s most striking characteristics is its venue’s beautiful outdoor courtyard, where representatives from various adult companies tend to gather to enjoy free drinks, free lunch buffets, and talk business at or around the various steel tables. The courtyard is surrounded by the walls of the hotel, and is decorated with leafy trees and banners promoting the sponsors of the show.
And make no mistake… the staff at the Tempe Mission Palms loves The Phoenix Forum crowd, and they treat everyone very well. Different hotels react differently to gatherings of adult Internet professionals, but I have nothing but glowing praise for the fine staff of the Tempe Mission Palms. A few days in Phoenix and you could almost forget that the industry is still working to climb back from the damage done by the 1-2 punch of the Great Recession and advancing porn piracy.
Yet even though CCBill was masterful again in its execution of the Forum, there were a few signs that the adult Internet industry itself has changed in the past two years.
Attendance was excellent, a good sign, but the gender gap was noticeable. Of the various industry shows, it has been The Phoenix Forum which historically seemed to attract more female professionals; this year I couldn’t help but feel like so many of the sales reps, marketing specialists and business people I met were men. I mentioned this to several other attendees, and none could disagree – although a couple did point out that there was a much larger showing from the gay community this year, which might account for some of the imbalance.
The other difference I noticed was a lack of industry celebrities – and by that, I’m not referring to talent. Not long ago, the more successful people in adult commanded a lot of attention at shows like the Forum. The reasons for that weren’t hard to figure out; if a certain individual was seen as very successful, others naturally gravitated to the promise of business riches, or industry glamour, being in with the “it” crowd, or even the possibility of being invited to secret late night parties where it was naturally assumed much debauchery would occur. Some of the more dynamic people of our industry’s past were present in Phoenix, but now they just seemed like everyone else – another representative from another company that’s committed to staying relevant in a changing adult Internet business.
I don’t mention these things to suggest the experience was anything but positive – I mention them only because they are signs that our industry, which some of us have called home for more than a decade now, is adapting and morphing. As one might expect during a period of economic recovery, excess has been replaced by something like pragmatic determination. If the industry does turn around, as is widely expected, it’s the individuals out there right now at shows like the Forum who rode the storm and refused to give in to a tougher marketplace.
