A misdirected meeting at CES

LAS VEGAS--On the Internet, no one knows if you are a dog. And at trade shows, no one knows if you are Jeff.

I had to meet Jeff Ziegler and Jake Player, the CEO and president, respectively, of PC recycler TechTurn, for a breakfast meeting at a restaurant. I had exchanged e-mails with the company but had never seen them in person.

While waiting outside the appointed restaurant, two guys approached me, and one pointed his finger at me. "Jeff?" I asked. "Yes," he said.

We sat down and exchanged pleasantries. Then another guy joined us. I hadn't expected that.

"Are you guys from TechTurn?" I asked.

No. They were from a speaker company. I excused myself and waited outside. Minutes later, my real meeting had arrived.

Trade shows are like that. Invariably, you have to go to hotel rooms and other places where you don't know the people. In a way, it's kind of like being a gigolo.

"Are you Mike?" someone might ask.

"I can be whoever you want me to be," I have to reply.

[mreiher]

Funny!

In past shows where I knew many people and many more knew
me from the position I held in a fairly large software company, I
know where you're coming from. Often I would find myself
hearing my name called while at parties, or going up the
escalator at the show floor and not knowing who the person was
saying hi or calling me out. Often causing you to have to come
up with creative ways to figure out why you know them (are they
a vendor, a customers, press, someone you talked to at a party?
?? who???).

With that said, your article does crack me up. :-) I hope you
enjoyed the show!

[hornerj99]

was that even worth writing?

Some of these CES related articles just seem to be useless, assignment-fulfilling, content-less waste. I'm sure you're a fine writer otherwise, but reading this article was a pointless waste of my time. Thanks anyway, and good luck on the next one.

[wsuschmitt]

Apparently...

... you've never read blogs before...

[mreiher]

Need something to write about!

From the looks of the coverage for CES, there is little to write about
anyways! This has not been a year of innovation from the looks of
it, but just natural updates to what's already on the market today.
Maybe MacWorld will come through (again) and give the techies
something to get excited about! Heaven forbid, it's NOT the HP line
of designer laptops... now that was a waste!