DRJ Conference Draws 1,400
More than 1400 attendees, exhibitors and presenters were on hand at the Sheraton San Diego Hotel and Marina Sept. 21 through 24 for the Disaster Recovery Journal Fall World 2003 conference and exhibition.

The event marked the 29th DRJ conference and exhibition since 1988. Throughout the four-day event, attendees sat in on presentations and workshops that covered topics including: crisis communication, planning for pandemics like SARS, achieving organization-wide BCP buy in, BCP auditing, real-time business impact analysis, and desktop crisis simulation. A special session on the blackout that struck the northeastern US in August drew more than 700 attendees.

"The attendance at our blackout special session was tremendous," said Bob Arnold, vice president of Disaster Recovery Journal. "Once again, this event showed the vulnerability of even well-protected corporations. Attendees wanted to learn as much as they could about this event."

On the exhibit floor, attendees visited 80 exhibitors manning almost 100 booths. DRJ President Richard L. Arnold says he's pleased with the growth of the conference, despite many companies cutting budgets and travel expenses. "We still managed to draw 1,400 people," said Arnold. "That's twice as many as any other DR/BC conference."

Co-sponsors of the event included: Evergreen Assurance, FedEx Custom Critical, Forsythe Solutions, Hewlett-Packard, Hitachi Data Systems, MessageOne, Quantum DLT Tape, Sprint, SunGard Availability Services, DRI International and PPBI. Emergency Management & Safety Solutions and Business Recovery Managers Association sponsored the mock disaster while Agility Recovery Solutions sponsored the Cyber Café.

DRJ will host its 30th conference March 7 to10, 2004, in Orlando, Fl. For more information on Spring World 2004, click here, or visit DRJ website.