My impression was the attendence seems to be down from last year. When I was on the exhibit floor, I did’t see any big crowds around Cadence/Magma/Mentor/Synopsys booths, or any of the other booths that I normally go just to pick up toys, even during lunch or session breaks.
As a matter of fact, there are a lot of toys left at the end of the exhibits on Thursday, that I was able to pick up a couple of Yo-yos and a spongee baseball for my kids. There are lots of pens, bags, and halloween candies left with no takers.
There was a *big* crowd around Cadence booth (around 10 people) at the end of exhibits on Thursday, waiting for Cadence to draw the winner for a Nintendo Wii. They gave out 4 of them throughout the conference. The attendance was so small that I recognize the names of all 3 winners (they haven’t announced the 4th winner by the time exhibit closed).
Mentor gave out an iPhone each day, but you need to sit through their presentations to earn the right to be in the lottery. I sat through one during lunch hour, but there were only 3 other people sitting there. Even with the high probability, I still didn’t win
Magma gave out a iPod Touch during their special lunch. There were other vendors which had iPod/iPhone drawings, but I didn’t pay attention to them.
Anyway, if anyone has a different impression as I do about attendance, let me know!

Siyad