Comdex gets a little funky with Village People's help//
The Village People help Comdex '97 get a little funky//
Parties, plastic bags and piles and piles of press releases
make up a hip trade show
Austin American-Statesman
Fri, Nov 21 1997
I spent time looking around at all the things I hadn't seen yet at Comdex
'97 in Las Vegas. The show is split into three big venues _ the
Convention Center area with some pavi lions, the Hilton convention
center area and a large area at the Sands. I walked and walked and walked
some more and these were, in a hurried four- or five-hour stretch, the
impressions I got: Everything, according to the marketing people at
Comdex, is "exploding." DVD is "exploding." LCD flat-screen monitors
are "exploding.'
' Sony's WebTV Plus is "exploding." Flash RAM cards for digital
cameras are "exploding." The only things that aren't exploding, it seems,
are weapons-grade explosives. Fujitsu had a weird Santa Claus workshop
booth. Gateway 2000 had a cow pasture booth that I spent exactly 4.6
secondsPeople, Back pageContinued from D1iting. Creative Labs
(makers of Sound Blaster audio cards) had an incredible sound demo
room, lots of giveaways and many cool games on display with
surround-sound .
A macho, macho party
This is the difference between a good trade show and a garden-variety
one: There's a company at Comdex called Adaptec. I had no idea who
they were Wednesday night and I still don't, so I'll refer to the Media
Companion: According to it, they make things like "AAA-130 Series
array adapters (PCI-to-Wide Ultra SCSI) for entry-level NT and
NetWare servers." Uh-huh. The only reason I know the company's name
is because it threw a party Wednesday that I sneaked into with the help
of a PR person and some techies from California. They were paying me
back for getting them into a smaller cocktail party with my single
invitation. Adaptec rented a huge ballroom at Treasure Island and had a
big disco party going on, complete with a semi-open bar. We danced to
a weird, funky '70s music revue that included audience participation _
"We Are Family " and some Parliament Funkadelic sung by women and
men with big wigs and male dancers without shirts who could best be
described as "Lord of the Dance-esque." But the big draw was THE
VILLAGE PEOPLE! They came, they saw, they YMCA'd. I shook hands
with "The Soldier in Fatigues." His hand was big, strong and a little
clammy. The rumor (from a very reliable source I just met ) says
Adaptec spent $150,000 to put on the Village People show. THAT is a
good trade show.
Comdex = food and drink
If I come to Comdex next year, I definitely know what to do: stay at the
same hotel (Lady Luck, classy and far away from the crazy, expensive
theme hotels on the strip), resist the temptation to bring more money
and attend more parties. The parties are important, I've come to realize. I
thought everyone went to Comdex, went to their rooms, then went out
and did the town. They're actually all at big meeting rooms eating
appetizers and partying down. The same people who got me into the
Village People show told me they'd spent every night at parties put on by
different companies. They hadn't paid for a meal all week and they'd had
access to open bars and open schmoozing. From what I hear, a PC
magazine party was the scene of Bill Gates dancing. Next year, I'll ask
around about party invitations.
Tote that bag, lift that PR
A big part of the culture at Comdex is what bag you carry. Because press
releases and sales material can get heavy, lots of companies give out
little tote bags or big plastic shopping bags in which to carry your
things. Aside from IBM's neat suitcase carriers, the most common bags
were Iomega, 3Com, Microsoft (all pervasive, even in this area) and
Creative Labs. The bags are a little like showing allegiance, even though
it's not much more than free advertising for the companies. And they're
one of these evil necessities: You can't not have a bag to carry all the
junk you get at Comdex. And press releases, my aching back has learned,
can get very, very heavy. Must remember to check if my health
insurance covers massage and/or chiropractic care for public relations
trauma suffered on the job.
o~~~ O |
