US conference season grinds to halt

Technology conferences throughout the US have ground to a halt as businesses come to terms with last week's attack.

In Altlanta the Networld+Interop conference which was already underway as the attacks commenced last Tuesday, continued with a skeleton contingent as major participants AT&T, Intel and Microsoft pulled out.

The CTIA - an expo for wireless and internet companies - in San Diego also continued, but with many participants leaving early and all keynote speeches cancelled.

Events due to take place this week have been put on hold indefinitely. In Los Angeles the Global Xchange 2001 wireless conference has been called off, while in Santa Clara the Rambus developer conference and CommVerge expo have also been cancelled.

Forrester Research has postponed its marketing conference due to be held in New York next week and organisers of Wireless World 2001 - which was scheduled for the World Trade Centre next week - have delayed the event until next year.

However, in Europe events are proceeding as planned, with HP's Carly Fiorina, Compaq's Michael Capellas and Amazon's Jeff Bezos all due to talk today at IDC's European IT conference in Monaco.

Apple confirmed to silicon.com this morning that it will go ahead with its annual expo planned for Paris next week, but reports this afternoon say that the computer maker has changed its mind and cancelled.