Trade Show Swag

At the trade show I worked last weekend I took home a few pieces of swag. Swag is an industry term for free items vendors give away with their logos on them so conference attendees remember them, and/or advertise them, possibly to do business with them in the future.

I'm mostly over swag. I don't care about 99% of it. That's quite the opposite of many trade show attendees I see who are swag hounds: people who troll the exhibit floor hoovering up basically one of everything, sometimes with multiple bags of loot slung over their shoulder like Santa Claus working in reverse. But even so I did take— or perhaps a better term is forget to discard— a handful of items.



First, there's the big blue drawstring bag. Every attendee got one at registration. It came with the conference program in it plus a few advertising cards from vendors who paid extra for the opportunity. I don't get why people like these bags. The drawstrings are terrible as shoulder straps. The bags are uncomfortable to sling over a shoulder and uncomfortable to carry in hand. This is in the category for me of forgot to discard. I folded it up in my real shoulder bag for the day, tossed it in my hotel room the first evening, and left it there all weekend.

Next, there's that t-shirt (rolled up). I don't wear t-shirts except as a rare gag. I don't know why I bothered picking this conference t-shirt up. It's not even good quality. I guess it goes into the pile for our next donation.

The green frisbee/stress toy is the one piece of swag I eagerly grabbed when I walked around the show floor. Actually I grabbed two of them. My spouse loves the push/pop stress toys; with 2 she can keep one at her company office and one at her home office.

The giraffe named "Phippy" is a set of Lego-like plastic blocks that builds... well, a giraffe. The vendor giving these away had several different kits to choose from. I picked the giraffe because it was the only one recognizable as the animal it's supposed to be.

Not pictured: a handful of stickers. Stickers are classic trade show swag, if for no other reason than they're so cheap to produce. I selectively grabbed a few for tools I use regularly. Since my work laptop was replaced a year ago I don't have anything on the cover right now!

This Week Goes to 11 (Days)

This is the week that has gone to 11. Eleven days, that is. I worked straight through the weekend at a trade show spanning Thursday afternoon through Sunday. Monday was my 8th day this workweek. Thus today, Thursday, is 11. And thankfully that's it. This amplifier workweek only goes to 11. At 4:40pm it's nearly quitting time. Time to slide down the back of the dinosaur....



I've got a 4-day weekend to compensate for working last weekend. Our last-minute trip to the Pacific Northwest will keep me busy from this evening through Sunday night. Monday will be a relaxation day. I'll sleep in a bit, laze around, do a few chores like vacuuming and laundry, laze around some more, etc.— oh, and hopefully unbox a new computer! After that I should be refreshed enough to get back to a schedule that looks like a mostly completed jigsaw puzzle again next week.