• March 2, 2009

B-to-B media trade group American Business Media last week announced a plan to modify this week's "Digital Velocity" conference, making it a little more, well, digital. Originally slated as a two-day (March 3-4) conference, ABM President-CEO Gordon Hughes said it will now be a half-day event held at the McGraw-Hill Building in New York on March 3, downsizing the number of attendees to 50 from 250 at a similar event last year. The spillover ABM membership, however, will get to see elements of the agenda online either via live streams or archived webinars. Hughes said the new streamlined, streaming approach would be a model for upcoming ABM events for the "foreseeable future," with the exception of its annual meeting and top management meetings, which will remain multi-day events. Over the past several months, a number of key trade group conferences have been canceled for 2009, including the Magazine Publishers of America's American Magazine Conference.