That compared to 135 I have on my list from last year and there's eight weeks to go. If Sage can draw a bigger average exhibitor and a lot more attendees, it would probably not be all that bad to fall short of last year's total. I have a sneaking suspicious that Sage is starting to cut deals to get more vendors, judging from the shift of tone of one key person. However, there is no sign Sage's relationship with its channel is improving. I'm not sure the statement from NetSuite channel execs that resellers are fleeing Sage is completely accurate. But there's a number of people looking around. "We are busy looking for another frying pan to jump into," was the comment from one long-time Sage VAR. Besides the cut in margins, 2 percent cut in co-op funds, there is also what this reseller termed "a lack of competence in the area of portfolio management" and that "Their integrations to their very own products stink to high heaven." The same source panned Sage's cloud effort. "They are just releasing their first multi-tenant MMB cloud offerings (Sage 100 and 300 Online) but they are not done well," he said. "They allow for no modifications or developer enhancements, which means that they are at a higher level than QB, but not at true Tier 2 usability." Sage needs more than Karl Rove and Jessica Alba to make this a worthwhile event and provide comfort to users and VARs.