By Frank Bauch
My recent trip to Interop Las Vegas 2009 was certainly far from a standard day in the office. Interop is a business and technology conference for IT and corporate decision-makers and buyers to meet and learn about new IT solutions and products.
My mission was to meet the buyers and speak with them on the show floor. With one day to interview 25 IT managers and discuss specific network problems and what trends they attribute them to, I had a lot to do in 12 hours.
This was also my first tech tradeshow, and I approached the event with little sense of how big the conference would actually be. I expected the convention floor at Mandalay Bay to be little more than a glorified middle school science fair. Thus, when I saw double-decker booths, a $10,000 give away, and golf carts roaming around the floor, I realized this was serious business...
...The word on the street was that attendance was slightly down at Interop this year, but there were still thousands of IT buyers in attendance at any given time, looking for solutions to help them with problems on their network.
I spoke to attendees from all over the world – from Sweden to Argentina to Japan – they all made it to Las Vegas. It took a lot of walking around the show floor, and I was definitely ready to get off my feet by the end of the afternoon!
In addition, I had the opportunity to sit down with a client’s long time customer, the Las Vegas Review Journal, and film a case study for their blog and YouTube channel.
Then, before you could say “shuffle up and deal” I was on my way back to the airport to head home to complete the whirlwind of a day.
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