Tradeshow booth

After having spent more than 20 “Business Days” in a year (almost a business month to be precise) manning tradeshow booths, now I have become a self-proclaimed expert at Tradeshow Booth Management (TBM). Before I start charging you guys for opening my mouth, I thought I give you all a free preview of what to expect (after all, you guys are my loyal audience!).

So what exactly is a Tradeshow?

Officially – Tradeshows are events to put the customers and suppliers in the same location so that meaningful conversations evolve naturally and you have a better prospect at forming business relationships. I know, I just made that up – but well – that is the spirit of a Tradeshow anyway.

Unofficially – It’s an event where bargain hunters and senior people with lots of free time on their hand come looking for well-made goodies and free gifts to collect from all the booths out there and eat good food. Rest of the time, try to catch up on some winks here and there in the conferences or pretend to be working hard while checking your Facebook. If nothing else, then it’s a place to court your potential employers and look for industry connections who can introduce you to those.

Now for some background. Presently I sorta earn my living by telling people how great is analytics and how everything will change the moment they start analysing stuff in their organization. I am mighty impressed by what I sell and most of the times, I do sound and am completely genuine. But, I am not pretty, handsome, attractive or anything that can make someone stop and notice me. Mediocre at best and with a smile that can even cause me problems at the remotest of places, I do not exactly qualify as a “booth” candidate.

Though my company invests in attractive goodies and we have a brightly colored (read tempting) goodie bag I only encounter goodie-bag seeking tradeshow delegates approaching me. The true “potential” customers either shy away or are too busy in pretending they are busy and not interested. So all day (and sometimes all night) I stand there waiting for the perfect customers to come, only to give away goodie bags to cheapskates.

Here is my advise to companies buying booths in Tradeshows:

1. Don’t waste your money and your employee’s time. You might as well treat them to a spa. At least they will be happy
2. If you still plan to waste your money, then put a good looking (read – beautiful or handsome) employee who will attract hoards of people by their killer looks
3. Prominently display your goodies, but have a strict policy on giving it to only those people who are ready to listen to your boring 20 minute Powerpoint presentation on how amazing your product and your company is. The goodies should be “earned” not given away!

And why am I writing this? I just spent an entire day grinning into the void and listening to an irritating jingle coming from a booth next to me. Now I can’t freaking get the tune outta my mind. To top it all, my legs and back hurts because of standing in a suite for 10 hours doing absolutely nothing.

Urban Forest

For over the last 5 months I have been using this device to consciously track my steps, the floors I climb and my sleep. It serves as a constant reminder of how lazy I generally am and encourages me to get my daily dose of 10K steps and 10 floors. I know it is just a glorified (read expensive!) pedometer.

Now doing 10K a day requires moderate effort like taking occasional casual walks during lunch and late in the night. However, what amazes me is – Singapore as a country is so vertical that doing 10 floors a day is absolutely effortless. Most of the times, my first 10 floors of the day are done even before I reach my office just because of the maze of stairs that I have to climb to go the train station and then change trains at the interchange and finally walk down to office.

Never before in my life do I distinctly remember having so many places that I had the option to take stairs. It is truly amazing to see how built-up this little island is and how vertical spaces have been used!

Clarity

Got myself a new pair of swimming goggles. It is sort of an annual event. Whether I swim or not during the year, I always buy a new pair. However, the kind of goggles that I buy, over the period of several weeks, become increasingly foggy till one point of time I am swimming blind with goggles on my eyes. So they only serve the purpose of protecting my eyes partially from the chlorinated water.

Anyway, the new goggles now clearly show me what I actually swim in. Swimming pool waters seem to have the most disgusting things floating around. Besides all kinds of human excretions there are dead insects, band-aids and other kinda filthy objects – the less said the better.

With the new goggles now, I can clearly see where I am going and what I am headed into. This slows me down tremendously as I try to dodge, avoid or turn course to keep me away from it. Now frankly speaking, it’s the same water I have swam in for the past several years. The only thing that has changed is my vision of the reality.

This is sort of analogous to what happens to me in real life. When I have clarity of thought and a very good idea of what is gonna happen to me in the future, I am scared, and I slow down in my pursuit of happiness. But when I have no idea what I am heading into, and the future is all foggy with me running blind directly into it is the time when I perform to the best of my abilities. Yeah a philosophical post but resonates with my general fear of the future!

Who’s got the Monkey?

I am presuming most of you are already aware and actively reading the Harvard Business Review. It is a must read magazine for anyone who is gainfully employed.

Now, over its history (since 1922 or 1980 … the way you wish to look at it!) it has published quite a large number of articles. Not all of them are interesting. And it is extremely boring to actually go and read articles to figure out if they are great or not.

I asked the big bad world of the internet and managed to get two different lists of HBR Top 25 articles and HBR Top 10 articles (based on some random research done by some individuals). And then over the course of last 2 years managed to read all of them.

My favourite HBR article of all times is – Management Time: Who’s got the Monkey? This article was originally published in 1974 November – December. I am sure if you do some creative Google searching you can get the article for free. Apparently it’s one of the top 2 most re-printed articles ever (the other being – The Core Competence of the Corporation).

The Who’s got the Monkey article is light hearted but has an extremely important message on managing your time in the office. I always seem to struggle being on top of all the things I have on my plate and everyday it seems the workload keeps growing. The strategies given in the article have helped me actively control my work without getting too stressed. Being light-hearted and at 6 pages it’s a short read on a commute but it does have a super long lasting impact.

Family Soap

I belong to a generation of soap users in India that believed that 1 Soap was enough for the entire body and the entire family. We fondly loved the one green soap-bar that was purchased along with the family grocery once a month.

This was before the time that there were Aeroplanes, digital telephones and Satellite television (or at least I didn’t know of their existence). My naive self believed that this one soap could miraculously clean my hair, my face and my body and that is all that I needed for my morning bathing routine that lasted about 5 minutes (yeah, just to make myself clear – I was small then).

Hamam Soap Commercial

Somewhere along the way, there came TV (or rather I started watching and believing it). Marketers convinced us that we need a guy soap, that is different from a gal soap. Then they convinced us that we need different kinds of soaps from head to toe. I am amazed why they never taught me that I need a different soap depending on the day of the week. (Marketing 101 says – if you can’t increase your customer base, then sell more products to the same hapless customer).

Anyway, the gullible consumer I am, over the period of several years ended up buying so many soaps for so many things that at one point in time my soaps were the most expensive component of my grooming routine (I guess they are even now!).

Then I guess marketers figured that to make their shareholders happy they need to come up with more soap options. So they started consolidating the soaps back again. Now slowly and steadily we have reached a state where we get – a 3-in-1 Body + Hair + Face soap. Viola an innovation so intense that they charge me close to 10 SGD for this one (mind you the green bar was like a few cents back then!)

Of course, being the staunch believer in anything that gets marketed to me, I have been using this soap “After sport” (as if I am an athlete) and feeling good about it. Only yesterday did I realize that I have just gone back to my good old days of the Hamam.

So this is an appeal to all my marketer friends. I have got more hard earned money yearning for your attention. Please senselessly advertise more banal stuff to me. I promise, I won’t disappoint you.

Take this Metalheads!

Accidentally figured out last week that the symbol in the picture below actually stands for - “I Love You” in sign language. I was flabbergasted. Generations of heavy metal fans like me grew up believing it was the symbol of the devil or just plan 666. It was the sign of the horns all the while. It stood for anti-establishment and our rebellion against the system – till now.

And now I know. It just means – I love you.

Imagine drunk men with long hair and beard wearing t-shirts that signify they are horrible creatures and are against everything nice, cute and sweet in this world. Then they shout and scream at the top of their voice and head-bang to loud music while the guitar solo guy plays the riff from his best anti-establishment song. And then the collective crowd of burly men raise their hands high up in the air and say “I love you”. Haha, heavy metal concerts will never be the same for me again!

And just to further offend all my metal-head friends – here is Britney crooning to “I love Rock ‘N’ Roll”

I love Rock ‘N’ Roll

The Experiment

When I say Justin Bieber is the greatest entertainer in the world, I am not being sarcastic. At the tender age of 19 he has achieved more in his life than most other artists do in their entire lifetime. He is the most popular celebrity on twitter (and internet) and he has the capacity to cause widespread sorrow and joy for millions of people around the world by his actions.

But (yeah there had to be a but there!). His clientele (fan-following to be precise) seems to be uniformly distributed across the teenage girls age-group. I am sure there are middle-aged men who swing to his grooves, but I am also sure that they are statistically insignificant.

 

While Formula 1 as a sport is wholly uniformly distributed across men in the older age group and the category of men listening to Justin and seeing Formula 1 should (I am presuming) be a significantly low number.

I am not exactly sure about what was going on through the Singapore Grand Prix organizer’s mind when they decided to bring in Justin for the closing concert for the F1 Grand Prix. I mean, men my age, don’t particularly mind *seeing* Rihana, Shakira or Katy Perry in concert after an exciting F1 race. But seeing Justin would not exactly be a manly thing to do.

As someone pointed out to me, this could very well be the organizer’s last ditch effort to get teenage girls to come see F1 (cause I have heard that generation can do anything to see Justin and also loves to spend a lot – any marketer’s dream). So to see him live, a 3 hour race with cars roaring and zipping by is not really a discomfort. And after these gals see the race, they love the excitement and become avid F1 fans.

This probably will be the most significant marketing experiment of the century and business schools all around the world will study this event as an amazing  showcase of appealing to a new segment altogether by just bringing in their most favorite celebrity to perform. Or, I guess, I am really missing something really really big here.

Metallica

Managed to attend a concert of a lifetime yesterday. Yup, I got to hear Metallica live on stage. In the flesh right before my eyes for 2.5 hours while I shouted, jumped and head-banged like there is no tomorrow.

Realized that at this age, things that were seemingly cool at 20 can cause severe headache, dizziness and neck pain the next day. Anyway, now I am happy, satisfied and have got that contended smile on my face and pain everywhere else. I managed to just fulfil one of my very long dreams. To listen to one of my favourite artists of all times – live!

Have been running this list through my head for several years – Artists that I would love to hear live. Unfortunately 1 of them is already no more amongst us now (yeah euphemism for Michael Jackson is dead!)

1. U2
2. Yanni
3. Metallica
4. Air Supply
5. Black Sabbath
6. Michael Jackson

I know my list shows my weird taste in music (or rather it makes me look like a guy who has no real taste). But well, grew up with Michael Jackson, Air Supply, U2 and Yanni and then Metallica and Black Sabbath happened during my confused Engineering years. So that’s the list. And I really hope I can see the rest of the 3 someday, very soon!

Laptop Workhorse

Its ironic. The week I was celebrating a decade of working my a$$ off, my company decided to reward me with a new work-laptop. Well, not really a reward. We have these hand-me-down laptops that are passed from ex-employees to current ones or from seniors to juniors. Depending on where you sit on the pecking order you get an extremely old one and sometimes if you are lucky enough they get replaced. And I happened to get lucky.

So for the last 2 weeks now I have been using a shiny new laptop. Its funny that in my entire career, all work laptops that I have ever had are – ThinkPads. Yeah I have used the pre-Lenovo IBM era ThinkPads as well as the Lenovo ThinkPads.

I am consistently impressed by their build quality and sturdiness. I know they look un-aesthetic and not pleasing to your senses. But they do what they are supposed to do, and can withstand a fair bit of abuse. I literally am on the road most of the time and the laptop is almost always with me – many a times running around across meeting rooms.

The ThinkPad brand has been around for more than 21 years. IBM launched the first ThinkPad way back in 1992 (apparently late 1991). Its hard to imagine something related to computers to have lasted so long with even the current designs where much following the aesthetics of the first one.

First 10 years of ThinkPad

I hope they continue making these amazing pieces of hardware with the same build quality for many years to come.

Workplace Decade

Have been overcome with a bout of nostalgia since today morning. Just happened to have completed a decade in corp-hell. I still distinctly remember 10 years ago this starry eyed college graduate walking into a big organization with big dreams in his heart. He wanted to be like his idols – Bruce Schneier and Linus Trovalds. (Now that I look back, I find it funny that I never idolized corporate tycoons like Bill Gates, Larry Ellison or Steve Jobs – though now I have a different opinion about them). As naive he was, he was completely unawares of the long thankless nights, the headaches, the customer complaints, the bosses, the menial work, the backaches and the big hidden beast called – corporate politics.

A decade from then the starry eyed graduate has now turned into a grumpy, cynical uncle. He has learnt to be a part of the big system. The system that makes sure that you perform to your complete ability while dangling the right kinds of carrots in front of you. The system that is like an addiction that you can’t get rid of.

Anyway, luckily or unluckily I am still completed related to software and data warehouses. At least, I love what I am doing irrespective of how the system treats me and what I have achieved. So here is wishing all my batch mates a happy decade and a many more happy ones to come. Amen.