Paul Ziliak, a partner at Des Plaines, Ill.-bases Xkzero, who admitted, “I was a skeptic” before the show began.“The floor lay out is 1,000-percent better than last year. Traffic has been excellent,” said Phil Smith, national sales manager for The Woodlands, Texas-based Kerr Consulting. “There are a number of third-party vendors that didn’t come, I wish had come.” Some others said flatly, without wanting their names attached, that traffic was good or so-so, but not worth the extra money. Sage got an attendance of 5,000 (most didn’t seem to think that number was solid) by dropping the attendee fee to $99 and hiking the cost of booth space. The plain vanilla small booths went for $8,000 a pop. However, it seemed there were fewer vendors than last year and some said there was noticeable drop off from those shown this year’s initial floor map. Overall, I’ll go with at least 60 percent happy as an educated guess. Expense-wise, don’t forget the Vegas overhead. Ziliak had to work and got room service. A plate of pasta and a small salad was $55, gratuity not included.