firemyst demistifying

Tradeshows or not

I fully agree with Apple stopping tradeshows (Re: Macworld Expo). In the course of my work I managed million of dollars related to tradeshow fees and related marketing expenditure. My company loves tradeshows and the buzz they create. They love to host golfs and business poker tournaments in tradeshow times. Be it in Las Vegas Sandsexpo, NYC Jacob Javits, Basel Fair or Hong Kong Wanchai Convention Center. We spend thousands on booth setups, invitations, staff models, keynotes, breakfasts etc. Every single year we rely on tradeshows to fuel our employees motivation and our business partners excitement. Now that the times are hard we’re also cutting spending on this just like Apple.

Certainly today tradeshows are just too mainstream, too wide and too expensive. It’s just throwing money out of the windows (no pun intended). Many companies can spend less by hosting their own summits and inviting their target customers. Ebay started hosting their conventions in 2002, IBM does the same. Many smaller companies host their own events, have better ROI and create a stronger company culture yet prone to innovation.

Tradeshows are fun, but they just suck if you look at how expensive and bigger they became. It’s catch 22. You need to spend more to beat competition and it hurts everyone. Too big is not good. Too big attract the small and believe me if I encountered thousands of small booths every year struggling with ROI on the large sums they spent on exhibitions they thought would make magic in their business bottom line.

While customers used to stop by, now we’re hiring 2 full times and a handful part times just to take care of inviting and handling prospects at the show. Making sure they come. Making sure they buy in. Customers hate big shows, exhibitors as well, sales just as well… so who’s making money? Show organizers (VNU, Reed etc.) of course and they have trade magazines as well to dump in their multilevel schema. This is going to be the end of an era.

about what i currently use

mac apps:

• evernote
• emacs
• org-mode
• fluid
• transmit
• path finder 5
• utorrent
• delicious library
• spaces
• address book
• iCal
• iChat
• iTunes
• iPhoto
• iWork
• terminal
• chrome (pc)
• medialink
• handbrake

web SaaS:

• dropbox
• netsuite
• basecamp
• highrise
• campfire
• google apps for business (mail, docs, calendar)
• google reader

web networks:

• del.icio.us
• trippit
• facebook
• asw
• internations
• squa.re
• tumblr
• plurk
• socialthing (more)
• bkite
• twitter (replaced by plurk)
• jott
• voisineo
• deezer
• LStyle
• dial2do

providers:

• godaddy
• site5
• broadvoice
• amazon S3

languages:

• ruby
• smalltalk
• xml
• html
• apache
• css
• unix shell
• sql
• pl/sql
• bind
• php
• C
• ssh
• lisp

first compiled early 2008. last updated 12/17

TaskPaper Address Book Integration

i love TaskPaper it’s so far the best project/todo manager of its class that i’ve found. as most of my work is around people i needed a way to link an address book contact to a task in TaskPaper. so here you go, i’ve been able to code this in AppleScript which i’ve never used before.

This one opens up a contact card without altering anything in the task TaskPaper-OpenContact-v0.1.scpt

This one adds the the task the address book URI in front of the contact name TaskPaper-Addressbook-v0.1.scpt

SSF2T HD Remix

I’ve first played SF2 on a coin operated arcade machine in ‘91, that makes the game 17years old or so. this new release is a HD redesign of Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo with remixed sounds. It’s beautiful, it comes with 2 games the original as it was released in 94 and the revamped HD version (mostly graphics and sounds were touched and a couple adjustment in players damage structure). Note that it’s possible to play online through the PSN and the playability in the multiplayer mode is stellar (only glitch is the life meter than sometimes don’t synch but it gives you visual confirmation of this)

PS3 Home

yesterday was the mega meeting at the plaza, it was fun. i will be posting a full review of home in the next days.