Empire gives the main focus with a handsome stage, a hidden back room, and an outdoor patio. The main room offers a nice stage and dance floor but, dance floor seating, only consisted of VIP tables. Here Sandra Collins, DJ Create, Donald Glaude, and Mark Lewis open the conference. The second night consists of a theatrical flavored line-up with Rabbit in the Moon, Mutaytor, Formula Redux, and Skin. Opening the night is the new electro act, Glycerin, who was the conference hit, headed by lead singer Anna Song’s fun and sexy performance. Friday night’s line-up is good but the order of performers could have been reworked. Darude went on too late and Second Skin’s punk-house scared away any warm feelings in the place. The back room offers the most progressive music with techno and breaks. The Patio has the best vibe with seating, house music and an outdoor view. Here Loveslapped, Boiler House Records, Fortune Industries, Om and House Society take over. Exacta, Pedro Cheballo and Starkillers provide a wide variety of funk, Latin and electro. Marques Wyatt gives a crowd-pleasing house set while Chuck Love’s morning set is lackluster. Too bad, because by that time the crowd was anything but lacking.

Club Ice offers the best sound ever, along with the annoying VIP tables. Victor Dinaire gets one of the awards for best sets with his deep, smooth, progressive house. BT, Keoki, and Swedish Egil followed him.

The big parties promise to be by the two-acre pool at the Hard Rock Hotel. Here the promoters hope to revive the Miami Tropicana pool scene. Christopher Lawrence, D:Fuse, DJ Rap, J Scott G, Seb Fontaine, Filo and Peri and Steve Smooth give their latest tunes. Good music but the crowd is more into posing than dancing. Most of the conference people are crammed by the DJ booth trying to talk over the music that WAS TOO LOUD. You had a tough time talking to someone standing right next to you. Great pool though.

The weekend provides DJ Irene, Charles Feelgood, Erick Morillo, Serge Devant, Faarsheed, Lavelle Dupree, Trevor Simpson and the Crystal Method. The side rooms have a good mix from DJs from all the states: Mike Harrington (Alaska), Tinktu (Utah), DJ Asterisk (Oregon), Nick Doll (Maryland), and Seth Nichols (Indiana). Lots of good talent, lots of good sets, but not quite the bodies and energy to make this go anywhere.

The panels are successful and well attended. Topics included are VJing, copywriting, publishing options for artists, and debating the web publishing issue. There is a music production panel with Darude and Rabbit in the Moon, and promotion advice from Derek Scott Graves (who won WMC “Best Promoter”).

The event ran rather smoothly. Not all the talent played or at the right time, but 80% was right-on. If you didn’t have a pass the events were $20 each. Steep for a midweek night out. With all this great talent around it would have been nice to see a bigger crowd and marketing to the locals. Maybe offering a low-price dance-only pass would lure more fans onto the dance floor. Also, perhaps considering moving the pool scene to a smaller and lower key pool that is for the industry and not full of trendy, tweaked out vacationers.