Trade Show, part 2
Nov. 18th, 2023 06:43 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
canyonwalkerOnce the very twee trade show I supported on Thursday got going it was fine. I think it was mostly the organizers who looked like they just stepped out of the picture on the cover of Hipster Monthly. The attendees and my fellow vendors were dressed more typically for tech— at least for middle managers and sales people in tech. There were no t-shirts or hiking boots to be seen. (It's well known in tech that engineers wear hiking boots because a mountain might spring up in the server room at any moment. That's how you get servers in the clouds! 😂)
My colleague, Al, and I noticed two unexpected things about our setup right about. First, in many of the timeslots we had two interviews. The organizers' idea in asking for two of us to staff the event was that they'd pair us off. Our expectation was that we'd work as a team, not "divide and conquer". Second, pretty much all the other vendors in the vendors room had pull-up banners and small give-away items. Our events person sent us no supporting materials.
One of the conference organizers stopped by and kindly asked how things were going. I mentioned the two issues above, framing them as issues of miscommunication and asking if they could be made clearer next time. The first, about the divide-and-conquer approach, the organizer agreed her team could communicate more clearly. The second, about banners and handouts, she countered, "I only told your company events person, like every single time we talked, to send such materials."
Our first interview timeslot, with a double booking, came and went... with nobody arriving to talk to us. We weren't entirely surprised. We know there's going to be some no-show rate with these things. We used the time productively. I caught up on additional work stuff that was piling onto my plate while Al attended one of the tech leadership seminars.
"They keep saying something that sounds like MLMs," Al texted me. "I'm not sure how that's relevant to software."
"That would be LLMs," I answered. "Large Language Models. A term describing modern AI technology. You can't go 5 minutes in a tech conversation today without AI and LLMs being mentioned."
"You're not kidding," Al chuckled. "I've been here 20 minutes and they've already mentioned it at least 10 times."
Al rejoined me for the second interview timeslot. That person blew us off, too. 🙄 But someone on our dance card for later in the day came over and asked if she could chat with us sooner. We were happy to agree as that removed another double booking and allowed us to work as a team in conversation.
The rest of the day continued similarly. We had another few no-shows but we also had two drop-ins by people who weren't on our dance card but expressed interest in learning about our company and products anyway. We welcomed all comers.
Al skipped out at 3:30. He had a flight home to catch. Things were slowing down in the late afternoon so I told him I'd be fine covering the rest of the day. Indeed it was slow, with one no-show and one more drop-in in the last 90 minutes.
At 5pm there was a small reception. The hors d'oeuvres looked good so I decided to stay long enough to make a dinner of it before heading home. 😅 I was ready to roll by about 5:45pm, called a ride with Lyft, and was home around 6:30.
My colleague, Al, and I noticed two unexpected things about our setup right about. First, in many of the timeslots we had two interviews. The organizers' idea in asking for two of us to staff the event was that they'd pair us off. Our expectation was that we'd work as a team, not "divide and conquer". Second, pretty much all the other vendors in the vendors room had pull-up banners and small give-away items. Our events person sent us no supporting materials.
One of the conference organizers stopped by and kindly asked how things were going. I mentioned the two issues above, framing them as issues of miscommunication and asking if they could be made clearer next time. The first, about the divide-and-conquer approach, the organizer agreed her team could communicate more clearly. The second, about banners and handouts, she countered, "I only told your company events person, like every single time we talked, to send such materials."
Our first interview timeslot, with a double booking, came and went... with nobody arriving to talk to us. We weren't entirely surprised. We know there's going to be some no-show rate with these things. We used the time productively. I caught up on additional work stuff that was piling onto my plate while Al attended one of the tech leadership seminars.
"They keep saying something that sounds like MLMs," Al texted me. "I'm not sure how that's relevant to software."
"That would be LLMs," I answered. "Large Language Models. A term describing modern AI technology. You can't go 5 minutes in a tech conversation today without AI and LLMs being mentioned."
"You're not kidding," Al chuckled. "I've been here 20 minutes and they've already mentioned it at least 10 times."
Al rejoined me for the second interview timeslot. That person blew us off, too. 🙄 But someone on our dance card for later in the day came over and asked if she could chat with us sooner. We were happy to agree as that removed another double booking and allowed us to work as a team in conversation.
The rest of the day continued similarly. We had another few no-shows but we also had two drop-ins by people who weren't on our dance card but expressed interest in learning about our company and products anyway. We welcomed all comers.
Al skipped out at 3:30. He had a flight home to catch. Things were slowing down in the late afternoon so I told him I'd be fine covering the rest of the day. Indeed it was slow, with one no-show and one more drop-in in the last 90 minutes.
At 5pm there was a small reception. The hors d'oeuvres looked good so I decided to stay long enough to make a dinner of it before heading home. 😅 I was ready to roll by about 5:45pm, called a ride with Lyft, and was home around 6:30.
