Trade Show Day 2: The Butler Serves

Pasadena Trade Show Travelog #7
At the show - Sat, 8 Mar 2025, 3:30pm

Day 2 of the show today is a long day. We're at the show from 10 'til 6, 8 hours. Often this would be a monotonous experience, but I've broken up the monotony today by portraying Jenkins the Butler.



Yes, I've done this before. I've been doing it for several years now, once or twice a year at trade shows. A few people at my company really love it and ask me if I'll do it each time. Plus, I get a kick out of it.

Today I Clark Kent-ed it for the first 90 minutes of the show. I wanted to gauge what traffic would be like. Plus, I figured the best time for getting foot traffic past the booth would be during lunch breaks. So at 11:30 I went back up to my room— have I mentioned how I love the fact it's just 5 minutes from the show floor in the convention center to my room in the adjacent hotel?— changed quickly— I had my mustache groomed already; that's the most time consuming part of preparing for character— and walked back in to the convention center.

Right away people recognized me. Some did double-takes or just stared in confusion, but several shouted, "It's Jenkins!" I had several requests for pictures before I even got to my company's booth.

This year the Jenkins Project also has a booth. Jenkins is an open-source project. The photo above shows me posing in their booth. I'm sharing that one here because I'd rather not identify my employer by name in this personal blog. "Okay, so what does Jenkins have to do with your employer?" you might ask. We're the main sponsor of the Jenkins project, and we also sell a commercial tool that's an enterprise grade version of Jenkins. Years ago we even had the butler in our logo.

Some of the reaction I got were priceless. One of the guys in the Jenkins booth has worked on Jenkins as a developer and project manager for 10 years. He'd only heard that "there's some guy who dresses up as Jenkins". He'd never met me (before yesterday) or knew that it was me or has seen my Jenkins act in person. He really treasured taking a selfie together. A gent at the neighboring booth was practically floored when he saw me. He was laughing so hard— with joy— that he couldn't even speak.

I stayed in character as Jenkins for a few hours. Originally my thinking was to change back to Clark Kent around 1pm, but I was still getting good response to the character so I held on 'til 3. Then back upstairs to change again. Dratted how there are no phone booths in 2025!

Trade Show Day 2: Long Day Done

Pasadena Trade Show Travelog #8
At the hotel - Sat, 8 Mar 2025, 8pm

Today was the long day at the trade show. The exhibits floor was open 10a-6p. That meant my colleagues and I were "on" for 8 hours. Coming off waking up at dumb o'clock this morning— dumb but not stupid; stupid o'clock was the day before— I figured I'd be tired by the end of it. And I was. But at least I was just tired, not totally trashed.

It was a good day on the show floor. We finished with 205 badge scans, 120 of them from today. And I enjoyed spending a few hours dressed as Jenkins the Butler. It was, as always, a good draw for conversations in our booth, plus just plain— well, as plain as possible when I'm wearing a tuxedo— fun.

I finished up the last few hours at the show back in Clark Kent disguise. I still had the mustache, though. ("Cuz it's real.) It cracked me up how many people excitedly told me, "Some guy was dressed up as Jenkins earlier, did you see him?!" My colleagues were amazed, too. We discussed how we always thought it was silly, like straining the bounds of disbelief, that Superman changes out of his Underoos and puts on a pair of glasses, and people are like, "OMG, mild-mannered reporter Clark Kent, did you see where Superman went?" Now we know this really happens. 😳🤣😎

After the show Shawn (one of my colleagues at the booth) and I joined the team from the Jenkins booth and one of their spouses to go out for dinner. Shawn and I were feeling our oats from those 205 badge scans, so we half jokingly pushed for going to an expensive steak restaurant. With a very budget conscious manager from other booth signing the bill, though, we ended up at a much more modestly priced Japanese ramen shop. Dinner was good, and also ended early— which was also good. All of us were tired from a long day.

I got back to my room just before 8pm. Like I said, dinner finished early. We had one drink apiece, instead of the 3 or more that typify a business dinner.

I gave serious thought to catching up on those other 2 drinks on my own back here at the hotel. I even have a voucher for 2 free drinks in the hotel bar, a gift for my Marriott Lifetime Titanium elite status. It feels like sacrilege not to use it, but that's exactly what I'm going to do: not use it. I'm not 30 anymore. "Have 2 free drinks on us" is something I'm okaying passing up when I'm tired after a long day and I could just stay in my room, stretched out across the bed, instead. I mean, if there was a free drink in my room, I'd drink it. I just don't feel like going back downstairs for it.

Plus, getting to bed early tonight seems like a good plan. Tonight's the clock change for Daylight Saving Time. We lose an hour of sleep. Though with my body playing stupid get-up-early games recently, the time change means I'll probably wake up at 6:30 instead of 5:30. Thus I'll be happy getting to bed by 9:30 again tonight.

Trade Show Day 3: Done, Feeling Spaced, Headed Home

Pasadena Trade Show Travelog #9
BUR airport - Sun, 9 Mar 2025, 3pm

Today was Day 3, the last day, of the SCaLE trade show in Pasadena, California. It was a half day for us exhibitors, 10a-2pm. That was good because I was feeling spaced out all shift. I'm not sure what the issue was.... I've eaten reasonably the past few days, I drank alcohol only in moderation (6-7 servings total over three days), and I got at least half-decent sleep each night... though the latter only by getting to bed early because I kept waking up stupid early.

"Maybe it's Daylight Saving Time," one of my colleagues suggested when I shared that I was feeling only 80% there mentally in the booth.

I challenged that idea, explaining all the things I mentioned above. And DST is just a one-hour change. That alone shouldn't have me feeling like I've got a light buzz going.

I think it's just exhaustion. I've worked 7 days in a row now. I need some downtime to refresh.

Unfortunately I'm not going to get downtime. I mean, I'll have a few hours this evening— I'm at the airport already awaiting my flight home, which is scheduled to arrive in San Jose at 5:00— but tomorrow morning it's back to work with a busy week ahead. I will be taking a day off on Friday; a comp day for working this weekend. And I'll likely take another the following Friday, too. But for now I'm amid an 11-day work week... and today is not even the 7th inning stretch.

Back Home from Pasadena, Busy Week Ahead

Pasadena Trade Show Travelog #10
Back home - Sun, 9 Mar 2025, 8pm

I'm back home from my weekend working trip to Pasadena. Yes, I was working through the weekend. There was a trade show there that always runs through the weekend. The show finished up at 2pm today and I hurried to the airport. My flight at 3:45pm was a smidge late leaving the gate, but there was enough padding in the schedule that we landed at 4:50, ten minutes ahead of our scheduled arrival. Hawk came and picked me up, and I was in the car rolling away from the airport by 5:02pm.

From the airport we went straight to dinner. Hawk ate at my favorite, Giovanni's pizza, on Friday, so we had to pick something else. I agreed to her favorite, Speedy's Tacos, in exchange for a date to be named later (not too much later!) at Giovanni's. Speedy's was good, though, so it's not like I was sacrificing. Much.

We got home just after 6pm, and by 6:30 I'd unpacked my bag and put everything away. We then took a short period of time to decompress doing mindless things on our computers before going out to the hot tub together around 7pm. On this we took advantage of Daylight Saving Time on the first day of DST. Yesterday 7pm would've been well after sunset. Today at 7pm the sun was just dipping down behind the mountains west of us. It was a beautiful time for a soak in the hot tub. Yay, DST!

As I continue mentally unpacking from 3 days at the trade show I reflect on how random it was when people would come by. The busiest shift was the opening session Thursday afternoon. It's typical that the first session brings the greatest density of raw scans. Saturday and Sunday it was hard to predict when we'd see a rush of people. This conference didn't have well delineated break times or even obvious lunch breaks. In addition to giving attendees a time to eat without missing sessions, these breaks give them an opportunity to visit exhibitors without missing talks— which is important because the exhibitors fund most of the show's cost. And furthering the seemingly random element to the booth traffic, our best lead of the show came around midday today when things were otherwise dead.

In case you're wondering what "our best lead of the show" means, here are a few sales terms, defined:

• A lead is a person who visits our booth. We scan their badge with a handheld device (this shows it was an Android phone with a special camera attached and a custom app), and that captures their contact details to be shared with us. We also call these scans. Either way, these are the people we can follow up with after the show.


• Within the range of leads we talk about raw leads and qualified leads. These are two key metrics used in planning goals for, and measuring success of, a trade show.


• A raw lead is any kind of contact. It could be a swag hound who just wanted stickers, a USB adapter cable, or other merch we give away for free in exchange for badge scans. Raw leads are the basic metric but ultimately not the most important.


• A qualified lead is someone who spoke with us long enough to identify they come from an organization with a business-critical problem (i.e., one that's worth them spending money to fix) that our offerings have a shot at solving. It's something we believe will turn into a sales opportunity.

OMG, here I am talking shop on what little is left of my weekend. 😖 Okay, enough of that. I'll save elaborating on what opportunities and other downstream terms mean for another time. Because there really isn't much of my weekend left. Today was kind of like a 3/4 workday, one where I got to start late (9:30) and still finish at 5. And tomorrow's Monday, a full workday.