One thing I learned early on is that when you pack your bags for the PASS Summit you ALWAYS leave room for the swag that you will be taking back home. I’ve made the mistake of packing for the week and forgetting this fact. One year I had a bunch of things shipped home because there was no more room in my suitcase.
Since I work for a vendor now (Confio Software, makers of Ignite8 and IgniteVM) I am more aware of the swag that I see at various conferences. Over the years I have seen some really cool things and my favorite ones are the ones I can take home and give as gifts to my kids. That means things like pens aren’t so cool, but if it lights up or flies then it is very cool. I actually think coolness is relative the chance you have of losing an eye (or two). If your swag has the ability to serve as the catalyst for a call to 9-1-1 then you are going to be a hit with everyone at the conference, and their kids.
At the PASS Summit we usually have vendors handing out lots of t-shirts as well as the usual trinkets. When they first came out the little USB sticks were cool, especially the ones that were 1GB. I still remember someone handing me a USB stick and I asked “how big”. They said 128MB or something and I just said “no thanks”. They looked sad. Oh well.
It’s the PASS Summit. It’s the Super Bowl of SQL Server conferences. When it comes to swag I offer this: Go big or go home.
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