could look that...
could look that way. There was the show called Comdex (Computer Dealer
Exposition), which doesn’t exist anymore, and everybody sold their products
through computer resellers and, shortly after that, retail stores like
ComputerLand or BusinessLand. Comdex was the best thing that ever
occurred for us. You could see everybody there. It was pretty small in the beginning;
it was all in the one Hilton Convention Center in Las Vegas. We had some
really interesting experiences there because we had to decide whether we
should spend a bunch of money on a really nice booth.
How do you do a booth for a trade show? Who do you ask? Nobody knows.
So we started searching around for someone who has done booths for trade
shows, and we find this woman. Her name was Betty. I have no idea what’s happened
to Betty, because she was probably in her 60s then, so she would be
90 now.
Betty was this trooper woman—she was a little woman and very skilled—
and she said, “Oh yeah, I know how to build you a booth.” We said, “OK, fine,”
and we didn’t really pay any attention. She built a solid wood booth. It was not
Ann Winblad 303
plywood, but like solid oak. It was beautiful, and it had neon signs. So then
somebody says, “Well, we have to ship it.” Do you know how much it costs to
ship a solid wood booth from Minnesota to Las Vegas?
Of course we didn’t know when you went to Comdex, you had to hire a contractor
if you wanted a plant, a contractor if you wanted anything plugged in; if
you had neon, you had to hire a separate contractor. So our first big Comdex, I
decide to go over early to see how our big, solid wood booth had arrived and
how was it looking and how we all were going to interact in the booth. You’re
walking in the hall and you say, “Well, there’s our competitor’s booth. Gee,
they’ve got all their material lying out already (the night before); I think I’ll just
read it.” So I went from booth to booth and read all the competitors’ offers. I
thought, “Well, they could be in here too; I’m not sneaking around. It’s fair
game.”
So I thought, “I better hustle over to our booth and say, ‘Don’t put anything
out during non-show hours,’ because clearly these competitors are not that
sharp in just laying this stuff around, but they might get sharper in the daytime.”
I get near our booth, and there was a medic there and all sorts of lights
and I thought, “Oh my God, did Betty have a heart attack?” Because somebody
60 seemed like 100 then. It turns out that we had this big tower—a solid wood
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