Blast from the past

Here’s something I noticed while at RSAC—Moscone Center opened in 1981, and Moscone West (where this photo was shot) opened in 2003.

It’s kind of cute that even in this century, the architects and designers thought pay phones would continue to be so necessary that you could make the signs as permanent as those for the loos and the elevators.

For the what?

This year, stress balls were big in RSAC swag. In addition to clouds, polar bears and other manifestations, there were these sumo wrestlers:

Rhinos:

And fat lederhosen-clad guys:

I did not understand what was up with that—but it turns out baramundi is a software management company headquartered in Augsburg, not the barramundi fish. (They claim the lowercase all one word name is derived from the Spanish "para el mundo", "for the world". Even so, it’s a reach.)

I didn’t even want one, but it was the last day of expo, and companies absolutely toss their swag at you on that day so they don’t have to pay to schlep it home, so I took the two the guy at the booth pushed at me.

And I’ve already been spammed by them.

Adjective AF

One of the things I enjoy about conferences—especially those with expos—is observing how companies choose to present themselves. This is particularly true of tech companies.

So, amidst a sea of “we cool—look at us” booths, this one stood out:

I did not even notice who they were; it’s only in this photo that I see the company name. But their carnival barker speaker was hitting home the “AF” part. AF punctuated every line of his spiel.

I have to say that I personally found it a little trying-too-hard-to-be-edgy lame. Along the lines of:

And I have no idea if it worked. I only know that, because I paused to fish around in my bag for my camera, one of the booth babes scanned my badge and foisted one of their totes on me. I’ll be getting their spam shortly. That will be fun AF.

Herbs and spices

You know you’re in the Golden State when the benches outside Moscone Center have this notice on them:

Man, I do miss that kind of thing.

(Thankfully, I didn’t really notice many vapers. I swear SF was at the epicenter of that trend about six years ago. I did catch a whiff of marijuana as I was walking past Yerba Buena Park one mid-day. That somehow seemed appropriate.)

Gratitude Monday: those who make it work

Well, here I am, back from RSA Conference 2020. It was quite a week, and there are a couple of things in particular I’m grateful for today.

First is the army of service workers it takes to put on a conference of this size. All the cleaners—especially this time, what with coronavirus and all; the food workers; the trash emptiers…

All no doubt low-wage contract labor for Moscone, with few (if any) benefits. The ones I saw were mostly non-white and over-40ish.

Also, the ones brought in by the various exhibitors to pizazz up their booths—making margaritas for this one, lattes for that; baking cookies on the spot (which were not handed out to Expo-only badge holders, BTW). I did not see one crabby-looking person, and the latte I got was just as pretty as any coffeehouse’s:

And the hotel housekeepers, God bless ‘em. You could not pay me enough money to clean up after someone else, so I always leave a fiver of the local currency and a thankyou note after each night of my stay. For the first time ever, I got replies. Tuesday’s:

Wednesday’s:

  

Thursday’s:

(Yes, I left a fiver and a note for whoever cleaned up after I left on Friday, too.)

The other object of gratitude today is the confraternity of product management. The one party I was really looking forward to was the “Luxury Whisky Tasting” set for Thursday night. Wednesday I was at a lunch event and chatting with a couple of fellows who are also PMs. I thought the company one worked for sounded familiar, so I said I thought I’d signed up for a party they were hosting. He got an odd look on his face and said they were holding a whisky tasting.

Yay!

But—a lot of people were going to get no-room-at-the-inn emails.

Damn.

But, he suggested we connect on LinkedIn, and he’d send me the suite number on the sly (it was being held in my hotel). And indeed, late Thursday he emailed me the info and suggested that there might be room later in the evening.

So I held off until about 45 minutes before end-time and then shot up. Man—the aroma of that nectar filled the lobby as I got off the elevator. My PM pal escorted me in, and I had one of the best times ever at a conference event. It wasn’t just the whiskies; it was the conversations as well. Cyber sec folks are very congenial; even more so when they’ve wrapped themselves around some single malt.

They’d run out of the Belgian whiskey by then, but I tried the Japanese, Welsh, Israeli and Scots stuff. The first did not suit my profile, but the others were divine.

And I’d never have had that opportunity had I not chatted with my new PM pal the day before. (I learned that the company had had 650 replies to their announcement. They gave 250 the lucky golden suite number, figuring about 40% would actually show up. More than 200 did; they were lined up down the corridor by the time the party officially started.)

So here’s to the professionalism of service workers, the generosity of PMs and the discovery of new worlds. Much, much gratitude today.