Vegas Day 1: No Signs, no backdrop, no worries
Here are two photos from our day. The first is the view of the sun rising at 5 am. Yes, 5 am. I spent most of the night wrestling with Ubuntu…and finally got it working, sort of. The second is of Carrie Lee standing in our booth.
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Our booth, which lacked a backdrop (DHL can’t really tell us where it is, it was supposed to get here Tuesday today tomorrow?) and after the Sign that I had finally got running crapped out, lacked a digital sign. (Have I mentioned we don’t want to do hardware? That we’re outsourcing to the experts who are custom-designing our very own, robust, industrial-grade Sign, due this summer? We cannot add value to hardware long term.) That’s right, we were probably the only booth at digital signage expo…without a sign. Well, except for the Canadian company the next row over who’s entire booth was stuck in customs.
I’ll go back to yesterday evening…and give a little insight into the mind of an entrepreneur. Here’s the thing — it’s not that entrepreneurs don’t doubt themselves. The difference between them and normal people is that they ignore their doubts as best they can and charge ahead, sometimes usually when they shouldn’t (and is always the best way to learn).
It was crazy of us to come to Vegas, especially if you were to know the relative value of the money we’re spending to be here versus our monthly operating budget. It was a big “gamble,” if I may (haha). I didn’t doubt it at all until this week, last night being the peak of my doubt/fear/worry that we had made a big gamble with a lot of money and totally bet on the wrong horse. I’m mixing too many metaphors.
Then today happened.
Somehow, it didn’t matter that we didn’t have a backdrop, sweet halogen lights, or even a working Sign. People stopped by in droves, asked all kinds of questions, showed genuine interest in us. Several people had us circled in the show directory. Many have been reading this blog. 75% of the people I talked to get our approach and were already looking for us before they met us. AND understood that no one else is doing anything similar. We’re not directly competing with any other company at Digital Signage Expo, but I didn’t explain that once, people just got it.
It was nothing short of amazing.
Some snippets from the day:
- “Man, you guys didn’t even get a carpet” / “I love that you didn’t get a carpet! I’m doing concrete floors in my new house.”
- “Do you guys do video?” / “I don’t want video”
- “If it’s open source, how do you make money?”
- “I read about that on the blog.”
- “I know of someone who could use this.”
- “One latte, please.”
It is a little freaky to me that people have read the blog. I don’t like launching into something to be interrupted with “uh, yeah, I read that.” It takes away my thunder.
