A Small Trade Show
Nov. 14th, 2024 09:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
canyonwalkerToday my company held its annual conference. Er, part of its annual conference. We did a virtual one-day conference several weeks ago that attracted 1,000 attendees. Today was one of three installments of our "world tour" conference. We had about 35 attendees out of about 60 registrants. Yes, that's... small.
I reprised my cosplay as Jenkins the Butler at this show.
I even gave a half-hour technical presentation with Q&A dressed up like this. Yes, if you're comparing it to my past appearances, such as at AWS re:Invent last year, the colors are a bit different. I changed to a light purple shirt here to match my company's "ultraviolet" color palette.
As far as the small even this year, there are pluses and minuses. On the one hand, it feels like a huge let-down to have an audience of just 35 customers and prospects when last year we had over 100 for the same event... and in 2019 we had 2,000 attend in-person. On the other hand, it seems that the industry trend here is that smaller companies are carefully reconsidering the costs of putting on big shows and deciding the benefits aren't there. The smaller format means that customers and prospects who do attend get legit face-to-face time with our CEO and other executives. As long as we can drive the right attendance that's really valuable.
I reprised my cosplay as Jenkins the Butler at this show.
I even gave a half-hour technical presentation with Q&A dressed up like this. Yes, if you're comparing it to my past appearances, such as at AWS re:Invent last year, the colors are a bit different. I changed to a light purple shirt here to match my company's "ultraviolet" color palette.
As far as the small even this year, there are pluses and minuses. On the one hand, it feels like a huge let-down to have an audience of just 35 customers and prospects when last year we had over 100 for the same event... and in 2019 we had 2,000 attend in-person. On the other hand, it seems that the industry trend here is that smaller companies are carefully reconsidering the costs of putting on big shows and deciding the benefits aren't there. The smaller format means that customers and prospects who do attend get legit face-to-face time with our CEO and other executives. As long as we can drive the right attendance that's really valuable.
