Have you spent days on end, standing on your poor sore feet, talking about things you don’t understand, to strangers who are really only talking to you on the off-chance you’ll give them a t-shirt?
I remember my trade show days all around the US and Europe very very well.
Digression: Once attending a UNIX trade exhibition at the Jacob Javits Centre in New York during the Winter in the ’90s – this was when there was no pre-registration, you could just walk in off the street – and the organizers were having problems with unfortunate homeless people who were wandering through a UNIX trade show (you can bet they weren’t there by choice!) to get out of the cold.
Anyway my boss at the time briefed all of us to escort any homeless interlopers off the stand.
I avoided this duty for the first two days as I was doing presentations on UNIX development (don’t ask), but on the last day this massive homeless guy was thumbing the literature on the stand and I was despatched to politely ask him to leave.
He was your typical steroetype of a homeless person. Mad matted hair, big coat, huge bushy beard, plastic bags, sandals in Winter…
I put on my nicest smile and very nicely asked if he wouldn’t mind leaving the stand. Then I spotted his delegate badge, he was a college professor….
There’s a lesson there somewhere.
As someone who used to make "presentations" on C++ development I can honestly sympathise with the victims of Gizmodo’s CES prank.
But it’s still pretty funny – and not a homeless guy in sight (see digression)…
Murphy's Law 