Deceptive ASIS Attendance
By John Honovich, Published Oct 06, 2017, 09:35am EDTASIS is being deceptive with its conference reporting, effectively inflating the event's real actual attendance.
What they try, but struggle to do, is report 'registrants' but, as our examples below show, they clearly are misrepresenting it as actual attendees.
Registrants Vs Attendees
Actual attendance is historically ~17% less than registrants reported, thousands of attendees less, so the difference is material.
Here is the claim from their post-2017 event press release:
Whatever 'attracting' they claim, it was far less than 22,000 that were 'attracted' to Dallas during that week.
Registrants represent anyone who registers online, often for free, whereas attendees are only the people who actually physically showed up at the event, e.g., this year in Dallas. For the companies spending $10+ million on this event, what they care about is real physical attendees.
Deceptive Examples
Start with ASIS' CEO, who last week during the event, on camera, claimed that their conference 'pulls about 22,000 people every year':
They clearly did not 'pull' 22,000 'people' to the event. Unfortunately, even ASIS CEO gets caught up in the deception between attendees and registrants.
He is not alone. Here is an ASIS board of director member saying explictly 22,000 attendees:
And here is from ASIS own event website that, yet again, says 22,000 professionals at the event.
This is unfortunately not new at ASIS, as we reported earlier in the year, examples including:
And:
Deviation From Standards and Their Own History
For whatever reason, ASIS has decided to deceive and retreat from both event standards and their own historical approach.
For example, for the 2015 show, ASIS reported actual physical attendance:
Registration for ASIS 2015 totaled more than 21,000. Verified preliminary attendance was 17,484 which was below expectations
And ASIS main competitor, ISC West, consistently reports actual attendees.
Do Better
ASIS is doing better on some fronts. Reaction was positive for having former President Bush, Mark Cuban and the reception at the Cowboy's AT&T stadium; even exhibitor satisfaction, though still not great, improved in 2017.
It is unfair and below the standards of security professionals to deceive about attendance. ASIS can certainly do better here.
2 reports cite this report:
Comments (20)

I can't report the violations because I am no longer an ASIS member :)
ASIS CPP code of conduct... "Observe the precepts of truthfulness, honesty, and integrity."
ASIS Membership code of ethics... "A member shall observe the precepts of truthfulness, honesty, and integrity."
"A member who knows, or has reasonable grounds to believe, that another member has failed to conform to Code of Ethics of ASIS should inform the Ethical Standards Council in accordance with Article VIII of the Bylaws."
I strongly agree that the true attendance should be stated. Do keep in mind that many of us attend the conference for the classes they offer, which are very relevant, so the amount of attendees on the Expo floor may be minimal. This is a very expensive event for dealers and manufacturers so maybe it is time to look at scaling back and making it a purely educational event in a smaller venue. Just a thought.
With so much out there and so many ways to get education , it is really tough to keep up the same venue and expect better returns.
The wow effect keeps getting harder and harder to achieve.
The expectation level of people in general has achieved an all time high for the amount of investment required.
Time is the element
Pleasure is the passion
and persuit is the Dream
We keep getting the same levels of display ,
some getting more advanced , and some using the same old platforms to try to achieve a better outcome.
I think its time to rethink the show s and restructure to meet the challenges of the industry , not show and tell time.
Set higher goals for R&D , Less on purchasing old ways of thinking.
and then its coordinating around current events and seasons for successful participation .
Interesting observation shared on LinkedIn:
ASIS member unhappy with IPVM's coverage:
We are not attacking the 'organization', we are criticizing a specific action with numerous pieces of evidence to support our analysis. If anyone has counters to our evidence or analysis, feel free to share here or email us at info@ipvm.com We are quite confident in our analysis and evidence as we we have reviewed this issue with ASIS multiple times this year.
If ASIS is a strong organization, they will simply discontinue the 'registrant' tactic, report actual attendance and move on.
10/09/17 01:37pm
Just as a counter, as a vendor, we didn't have a clue if there is 22,000 attendees or 15,000 attendees. What we saw was a lot more qualified people come by our booth and like what they saw.
That was the goal we were looking for to attend to the show and we walked away with good quality leads to follow up on. From that measurement, ASIS produced a good show.
Before the show we were hesitant to return because we anticipated there would be a light turnout, but because of the strong showing of the qualified prospects, we renewed and will be returning next year.
Just wanted to point that out as a different point of view.
Its about time that ASIS stopped being a glorified book store, and started helping the industry it claims to represent. Surely ASIS efforts would be far greater to the industry (both interrogator's and end user's) if it worked to get a nationally recognized vocational school and/or apprenticeship program started.
Our industry biggest weakness is the lack of skilled technicians and service personnel. Both end user and integrator would be better off with more people coming into our industry at the entry level with some basics relevant to our industry.
It would stop the inflationary practice of poaching technicians, and give interrogators a talent pool to to hire from leaving more future members for ASIS to sell books to!!
I think the choice of venues for next year may also kill them as many in the industry are already moaning about going to Las Vegas twice next year (ISC West in April and ASIS 2018 in September)!
Update: ASIS continues its deception in their new 2018 brochure:
It is amazing that ASIS continues to refuse to report how many actually attended the event.
I'm surprised nobody is talking about the CEO of Jacobs (Tuesday Keynote Speaker) spending 15-20 minutes talking about how great of company they are and their 50,000 employees all have a voice about how the company is ran. Typically ASIS will allow you to make a 1-2 minute intro on your company before you start talking about something constructive to the security market. There were quite a few people walking out before they were complete selling their company to the "22,000" attendees.