NXTcomm officials will release their audited attendance numbers next week, showing that the first-ever event in Chicago in June drew 15,273 people in total, 8202 of which conference and exhibit attendees.

Those figures are shy of pre-show expectations of 20,000 total attendance, but NXTcomm Executive Director Wayne Crawford said he is “quite pleased overall” with the audited figures, given the speed with which NXTcomm was created out of the merger of USTelecom’s TelecomNEXT and the Telecommunications Industry Association’s Globalcomm shows.

“The show had a good buzz, and the conferences and keynotes were well attended,” Crawford said in an interview. “I think we can also measure our success by the fact that 81% of our exhibit space was rebooked, which is better than we expected. Given the fact the event had just been put back together, everyone agreed this is a major accomplishment.”

NXTcomm had expected a 75% rebooking for next year’s show, which takes place June 16-19 in Las Vegas.

The organization is already engaged in a very active evaluation of how this year’s show went, based on extensive surveys of participants and focus group research designed to help NXTcomm refine its marketing message, said Crawford, who came to the NXTcomm organization after running the very successful Consumer Electronics Show. The industry can expect to see new branding for the show beginning in September, he said.

“Like the industry we serve, NXTcomm is more an IP networking show,” Crawford said “We will take the strengths of this year’s show which drew well from AT&T [700 attendees] and Verizon [300 attendees] and look for better penetration in the Tier 2 and Tier 3 markets. Also, we had representation from the cable MSOs but we need to go deeper there. The technologies are the same in cable and wireline.”

In the enterprise space, NXTcomm drew substantial Chicago attendance but would hope to draw from a wider geographical range in Las Vegas, Crawford said.

“We want to cover more aspects of how IP networking is applied, including pushing further into content, in terms of how the business is done and the revenue models,” he said. “We need to come up with and present a unique value proposition. It is truly about the network – the physical layer, software, applications and the content business deals.”

NXTcomm also made good penetration into the wireless arena, both fixed and mobile, Crawford said, but plans to push farther here as well.

Consolidation among service providers has an impact on show attendance, he admitted, as the sheer number of people involved in buying technology shrinks when service providers consolidate.

“We cannot get around that fact, but we can adapt to fit the marketplace and make sure the right buyers from these companies are coming,” Crawford said. “And we can make sure Tier 2 and Tier 3 companies are better represented.”

About 12% of the total NXTcomm audience was international visitors, putting the show on track to reach its goal of 20% international attendance in three years, he said.