A la Victor, I was going to do some special post for number 100. I've been thinking about it for the last couple days, mentally composing, but in the end I just went with the extemporaneous reaction to the NHLBI blood pressure press release.
Ah well. It was a good one. Sorry you missed it.
Things are going well at the geek conference.
I'm surprised, though, by how tired I am after sitting all day. It is a typical conference experience: two hours of Powerpoint. 15 minute break. Two hours of Powerpoint. Lunch. Two hours of Powerpoint...I made a huge mistake Sunday. We had a working lunch in the hotel. In my attempt to try to stay moderately healthy through four days of hotel & restaurant food I had decided to go vegetarian while I was there...so I ended up with pasta, bulgur salad, and corn. Such carbo-loading would have been fine had I been doing a marathon in the afternoon, but as it happened I was fighting to keep my eyes propped open during the next Powerpoint presentation even though I was interested. (90% of the normal population would probably have been falling asleep even if they'd had amphetamines for lunch, I suspect.)
Today I visited vendors. I really am in the market for some vendables, so I handed out my cards and got some nice highlighters in return. I can't bring myself to take stuff unless my company might actually be buying the product...I know that's weird. Today a guy practically begged me to take a coffee cup, but I couldn't use his product. He said I could have the cup anyway. (I might have given in, but I didn't want to carry it home on the train.)
I think my reluctance to take the promo stuff came from a trade show I worked many years ago. (Boy did I look fat and ugly surrounded by the marketing reps!) The logic at the time was to have a "technical" person there to answer questions. Thing was, nobody had questions. They had tote bags from another vendor, and they just went from booth to booth, opening their bags for the free t-shirts and pens like they were trick-or-treating. All we had were crappy Bic pens, too, so most people passed us up in favor of the fake Mont Blancs in the next booth. I haven't been able to get excited by trade shows since.
Of course, this would all change if vendors were giving out something really cool, like a Slinky.
Posted by Nic at October 21, 2003 08:48 PM | TrackBack