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canyonwalkerDay 1 of the trade show is done. I got back to my room after dinner with colleagues just before 9pm. That's both early and late. Early, because we could have stayed out later if we really wanted. But also late, because I'd already been up since 6:30am and working since 7:30am. I'm glad we called it a night when we did.
My day at the trade show started with an unexpected hike. I booked a hotel a mile away by foot and figured I'd walk back and forth to the show. (The only closer hotels are pretty seedy.) When I looked at maps while making that decision I noted that both the hotel and venue are near the shore, and a walk along the shore should be an easy, level walk— right? Ha ha, not in San Francisco. There's a hill.
On the plus side, climbing over the hill gave this nice view (pic above) of the old Fort Mason, now repurposed as event venues, with the Golden Gate Bridge in the background. The weather was even nice on Wednesday morning, with mostly clear skies in a day that would warm up to over 75° in SF.
The conference is a nice, manageable size. I estimate the attendee count in the range of a few hundred. Of course, many of us are exhibitors, staffing our booths. But even so, the exhibitor area is compact, too. There are just under 20 companies here.
Traffic at our booth on day 1 was modest. What we didn't have in sheer numbers we made up for in quality of conversations, though. ELC is the Engineering Leadership Community, an SF based organization of leaders (managers and executives) in software. While most conferences attract a lot of swag hounds—people who troll all the vendors booths, scraping up all the stupid little freebies like pens, stickers, t-shirts, and desktop baubles they can get their hands on— at this show we can barely give them away. The audience of managers, directors, and VPs in technology organizations largely aren't swayed by those little gimmicks. And for people who are swayed by silly little gimmicks, there's the Google Next conference going on across town, where exhibitors will have all kinds of stupid shiny baubles to get people to stop at their booths.
My day at the trade show started with an unexpected hike. I booked a hotel a mile away by foot and figured I'd walk back and forth to the show. (The only closer hotels are pretty seedy.) When I looked at maps while making that decision I noted that both the hotel and venue are near the shore, and a walk along the shore should be an easy, level walk— right? Ha ha, not in San Francisco. There's a hill.
On the plus side, climbing over the hill gave this nice view (pic above) of the old Fort Mason, now repurposed as event venues, with the Golden Gate Bridge in the background. The weather was even nice on Wednesday morning, with mostly clear skies in a day that would warm up to over 75° in SF.
The conference is a nice, manageable size. I estimate the attendee count in the range of a few hundred. Of course, many of us are exhibitors, staffing our booths. But even so, the exhibitor area is compact, too. There are just under 20 companies here.
Traffic at our booth on day 1 was modest. What we didn't have in sheer numbers we made up for in quality of conversations, though. ELC is the Engineering Leadership Community, an SF based organization of leaders (managers and executives) in software. While most conferences attract a lot of swag hounds—people who troll all the vendors booths, scraping up all the stupid little freebies like pens, stickers, t-shirts, and desktop baubles they can get their hands on— at this show we can barely give them away. The audience of managers, directors, and VPs in technology organizations largely aren't swayed by those little gimmicks. And for people who are swayed by silly little gimmicks, there's the Google Next conference going on across town, where exhibitors will have all kinds of stupid shiny baubles to get people to stop at their booths.
