Big tech trade shows go the way of Starbucks lattes; Big SUVs

January's big tech conferences--Macworld and CES--are downsizing and becoming vestiges of a bygone era. The latest: Belkin has bolted from Macworld in January joining Adobe.

John Paczkowski at Digital Daily reports that registrations at Macworld are down 20 percent from a year ago and companies like Adobe and Belkin are skipping the show floor.

And Macworld is the cool show in January. What's going to happen to CES? I was going to go, but frankly I didn't see the ROI in it. In addition, CNET and our reviews bloggers at ZDNet will be there. But overall CES sounds like a big buzz kill this year.

I have had an ongoing conversation with Dan Farber about CES. Dan is a little more optimistic about CES, but I'm just not feeling the love.

Meanwhile, Stephen Shankland reported the CES state of affairs last month and detailed how Cisco was pulling back from the show.

Cisco isn't the only one to scale back. Also on the list are Yahoo, Seagate, Logitech, and Belkin, company representatives confirmed. Philips won't have a space on the CES show floor, either, though Funai, which has taken over manufacturing and selling TVs under the Philips brand in the United States, will pick up some of the slack.

Big shows are about as cool as those Lincoln Navigators these days.