Twee Trade Show
Thursday I went to represent my company at a small conference nearby, in Palo Alto. It was designed for an audience of CxOs. There were a series of seminars throughout the day. In a separate room, we vendors had little tables for sit-down conversations with the industry execs attending.
The way these trade shows work is that vendors like my company basically pay all the bills. The attendees get to come for little or no cash payment to enter but they instead pay with their time. They have to pick at least 3 vendors from the list to sit down with for a 30-40 minute conversation.
I arrived at the venue, a nice meeting center on Stanford University's campus, a bit early as I had to carve out 8-8:30 for a time-critical teleconference meeting with a prospective customer. The customer emailed us a few minutes before 8 apologizing that he wouldn't be able to join at 8. At least he offered two reasonable, close-in alternatives: Thursday afternoon or Friday morning. And my colleagues and I made good use of the time on our calendars by repurposing the meeting to be an internal alignment call. It even ran long, taking a full hour to get all of us on the same page.
While I was sitting taking the call in an easy chair with a small fold-out writing panel a la college lecture halls (hey, it is a university!) I amused myself people-watching the folks passing by the registration desk ten steps away. Let me just say, I have never seen such a concentration of otherwise dowdy middle-age men all dressed so twee. I saw a mixture of popped collars, crazy wide ties that were in style 50 or even 100 years ago, and formal jackets with loud patterns. Tight pants and exaggeratedly large shoes, the two combining amusingly to make people look a bit like clowns dressed for the boardroom, were plentiful. And among those who weren't wearing oversized pointy shoes, I saw enough pairs of the same Johnston & Murphy light-brown wing-tip Italian loafers to open a shoe store. (To be fair, I own the same shoes, which is why I recognize them. 🤣 I didn't wear them yesterday, though.)
I was also amused by the name badge the conference staff had prepared for me. It was nice, if oversized, with a sleek, gray-on-black motif. But the spot where they printed my name was black. Yes, black printing on black cardstock. That kind of set the tone for the day that this conference was run by people still learning how to run a conference. But, gosh, were they quaintly stylish!
The way these trade shows work is that vendors like my company basically pay all the bills. The attendees get to come for little or no cash payment to enter but they instead pay with their time. They have to pick at least 3 vendors from the list to sit down with for a 30-40 minute conversation.
I arrived at the venue, a nice meeting center on Stanford University's campus, a bit early as I had to carve out 8-8:30 for a time-critical teleconference meeting with a prospective customer. The customer emailed us a few minutes before 8 apologizing that he wouldn't be able to join at 8. At least he offered two reasonable, close-in alternatives: Thursday afternoon or Friday morning. And my colleagues and I made good use of the time on our calendars by repurposing the meeting to be an internal alignment call. It even ran long, taking a full hour to get all of us on the same page.
While I was sitting taking the call in an easy chair with a small fold-out writing panel a la college lecture halls (hey, it is a university!) I amused myself people-watching the folks passing by the registration desk ten steps away. Let me just say, I have never seen such a concentration of otherwise dowdy middle-age men all dressed so twee. I saw a mixture of popped collars, crazy wide ties that were in style 50 or even 100 years ago, and formal jackets with loud patterns. Tight pants and exaggeratedly large shoes, the two combining amusingly to make people look a bit like clowns dressed for the boardroom, were plentiful. And among those who weren't wearing oversized pointy shoes, I saw enough pairs of the same Johnston & Murphy light-brown wing-tip Italian loafers to open a shoe store. (To be fair, I own the same shoes, which is why I recognize them. 🤣 I didn't wear them yesterday, though.)
I was also amused by the name badge the conference staff had prepared for me. It was nice, if oversized, with a sleek, gray-on-black motif. But the spot where they printed my name was black. Yes, black printing on black cardstock. That kind of set the tone for the day that this conference was run by people still learning how to run a conference. But, gosh, were they quaintly stylish!