Trade Show Day 2: The Butler Serves
Mar. 9th, 2025 07:44 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
canyonwalkerPasadena 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!
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!
