Six Degrees of Saratoga
New hypothesis: You make your best connections at a trade show in the morning. Everybody is fresh, fully caffeinated and well-fed. Your feet don't hurt and you're not freezing. Convention Centers always turn the air conditioning down to about 62 in the afternoon, I guess to keep everybody awake. I really hate being cold, so the freezing environment is always a huge downer for me. Don't talk to me in the afternoon if I'm in a very, very cold exhibition hall.
THE GIRLS FROM SARATOGA
The girls from Saratoga. Definitely worth the trip!
Our very first visitors this morning were Amy and Krista from Saratoga Hospital in Saratoga Springs, NY. It just so happens that I spent a lot of time in Saratoga in my teens and 20's, so we talked about going to the races and late nights at Siro's and how a famous sportscaster once drank champagne out of my shoe (it was a jelly shoe and I'll tell you about it later, cuz it's a good story). But our real connection was made over Underwood Drive, because my family rented a house at 22 Underwood Drive during August for many, many years, and Amy and Krista both have friends who live on Underwood Drive and so we think Underwood Drive must be the coolest place to live in Saratoga. My daughter has been nagging me to take her to Saratoga this summer, so I might have to do that just so I can go see my new best friends Amy and Krista. Because you know how you meet people and you just know they're your kind of people? That's these Saratoga girls. Like me, they are both nurses who do IT, which means they can take your vital signs, give you an enema and hack into your computer before you can find your way to the toilet. And it just doesn't get any better than that. Unless you're not a nurse and not into IT, in which case I'm sure you can think of stuff that gets better than that. But it's my blog, so I get to declare the stuff that nothing gets better than and this is it. By the way, nurses who are into IT are called Nursing Informaticists and you should be very glad our country has a lot of good ones because they play a really important role in keeping this whole mess of a healthcare system functioning.
THE GIRLS FROM NASSAU
If you get sick in Nassau? No worries!
I am not talking about Nassau, NY. I am talking about Nassau in the Bahamas and Margaret and Tricia came all the way from Doctors Hospital there to attend this tradeshow. When you come from a place like The Bahamas you have to really know your history because people will ask you all sorts of questions like how many people live there, what percent of your gross national product is devoted to tourism and how many islands are there in the Bahamas? There are 700 islands in the Bahamas. Seven hundred. Some of them are very, very small and uninhabited but that's still not chump change. It's a good thing no one ever asks me such tedious questions about Charlottesville because I couldn't tell you the first thing about our demographics or geography. Only I just googled the "size of Charlottesville" and can now tell people that it is 10.31 square miles, but who on earth would ever care? That's just not as sexy as saying your place is made up of 700 islands.
SERIOUSLY? NO TCHOTCHKES?
Russ, who brought a purple booth but no swag.
If you don't know what a tchotchke (choch-key) is, you have never attended a trade show. Tchotchkes are trade show swag - the giveaways that are meant to make the visitor feel beholden to the vendor who is handing out this portable treasure. I was trolling for trade show swag this morning, because later on I am going to share all that with you and, frankly, it's something to do. I stopped by to visit my friend, Russ who has been coming to this show at least as long as I have. It's always easy to spot Russ' booth because his company color is purple. Exhibit halls are awash in a zillion shades of blue so anything else really stands out. Anyway, I told Russ I was trolling for swag and he announced that he didn't bring any. Didn't bring any swag? Exhibiting at a trade show without tchotchkes is like not wearing white gloves on Easter Sunday. At first everyone is horrified but then they all envy you. It's a gutsy move, Russ, and I respect you for it. There's nothing worse than spending 15 minutes demonstrating your product to someone who really just wanted to take one of your fish-shaped stress balls home to their kid.