About the only people I know who go to Gartner Data Center are vendors who have booths or are looking to network. I have actually run into a high school friend who loves Gartner for their guidance as they are lost without the reports. These are high school friends, not college friends or technical friends from high tech companies.

Curious I took a look at the program for this year's Gartner and all the speakers are Gartner analysts except Dave Barry. There are 47 Gartner analysts presenting

If you are attending as a vendor you better be ready to engage Gartner for their expertise to put you in the magic quadrant. BTW, that expertise is not free. :-)

Criticism

It has been pointed out that the criteria for the Magic Quadrant cater more towards investors and large vendors than towards buyers.^[2]

Much of the criticism is focused on the lack of disclosure of the money received from the vendors it rates, raising conflict of interest issues. Also a source of criticism is the lack of disclosure on the vendor's component scores and the lack of transparency in Gartner's methodology used to derive the vendor's position on the MQ map.

I guess for my high school friend would like the presentations as they can match the analyst with the report. But is this an industry conference?