Trade Show Guru

A while back I wrote a post asking, “Are You a Trade Show Kinsella?” Of course, to answer this question, you have to know what a trade show kinsella is. Thus, the real question of the post was, “What is a trade show kinsella (and are you one).” Well, here’s the answer you’ve been waiting for… [Read more →]

I may be the trade show guru, but I’m not a blogging guru, and I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t know a lot about blogging best practices. But if I wanted to know more about blogging best practices, I would certainly read the blog GrowMap. Not only does this most excellent blog cover the best practices for blogging success, but it is also written by a blogger who knows how to comment and has won my “Spam My Blog – Win a Free Link” contest. The contest was to come up with the best “generic spam comment”, though I later changed it to the worst generic spam comment, as I didn’t want to give the dammed spamming zombies any ideas. In my contest, I offered to give a keyword link to the commenter who who came up with the best/worst generic spam comment. [Read more →]

My wife and son planted some carrots this year. Three of the carrots decided to grow together and create carrot art. I call the “art sculpture” these three carrots created Carrot Love. I’ve never seen anything like it. Have you? FYI: The picture (you can click to enlarge) has three views of the same three intertwined carrots. I know my carrot art may not be the face of Christ on a burnt piece of toast, and I’m not planning to sell the carrots on eBay and make a fortune (I think the carrots have already been eaten)… but I still think my “carrot artwork” is pretty cool. Kind of like the picture I took of balanced rocks.

Anyway, the carrots grew in a large pot in the backyard. We garden in pots and wine barrels as well as the ground because of our gopher problem. I am currently at war with the gophers. [Read more →]

Based on the response (a good number of comments!) to my last post about blogging regularity (and because I sometimes don’t have much to say about trade shows, which is why I already have my random stuff category), I decided to add a new category called blogging (hopefully, I’ll write more posts for it than I have so for my movies category). And the first (well, second) post for my new blogging category is about generic spam comments. I’m guessing that you agree with me and hate comment spam and the spamming zombies that leave them. Because the Trade Show Guru is protected by Bad Behavior and Akismet (and a ruthless moderator – me), I don’t get very much comment spam (and what I do get is deleted with a click of the mouse). But I do see what I think is comment spam on some other blogs that I read, and it bugs me. [Read more →]

If you want your blog to be successful, do you need to be regular? If your blogging is constipated, should you give it a bit of blogging Metamucil? (sorry for the visual). But my basic question is, to be a “successful blogger”, do you need to make a new post on a regular basis? And how regularly? Does “regularity” matter? [Read more →]

I’m a day late (I’ve been busy being a father), but let me take a moment to say to myself, to my dad, and to all the dads out there… Happy Fathers Day! Let’s all raise a glass to Fathers. Without them, we wouldn’t be here. Hip, hip, hooray for Fathers!

Are you a trade show kinsella? Do you know what a trade show kinsella is? I’ll reveal what a trade show kinsella is in a future post, but for now I’ll provide a hint. A trade show kinsella is a type of trade show exhibitor. If you are a trade show exhibitor that reads and follows the wisdom of the trade show guru, you wouldn’t be a trade show kinsella. Being a trade show kinsella is not a good thing, but there are many of them out there (along with all those trade show zombies). So my question to you is, can you guess what a trade show kinsella is? In the meantime, I read a great little obituary recently that I thought I’d share with you… [Read more →]

If you’re a regular reader of the Trade Show Guru, you know I’m partial to the word “rocks“. Some might even say I overuse the term, as I have written the posts “Netflix ROCKS” and “Avast AntiVirus ROCKS“, and the post “Balance” using the metaphor of a pile of rocks. Well, in this case, the word is appropriate. The movie Slumdog Millionaire ROCKS! [Read more →]

The dirty little secret to designing great trade show exhibits is that you don’t have to be a “professional designer” to design a great trade show exhibit. I’ve worked in the trade show exhibit industry for years and have seen more trade show exhibits than anyone should have to, and while I can usually tell the “professional” designs from the “in house” or “amateur/do-it-yourself” designs, that doesn’t mean all the former are great and the latter are not. Quite the contrary. [Read more →]

While I’m a big believer in the old saying “there’s no such thing as a free lunch,” and almost always free isn’t free. But actually, sometime free really is free. One example is anti-virus programs. In the beginning, I thought to get good protection again computer viruses, I needed to pay for it, so I bought McAfee anti-virus, in part because it included “free lifetime virus updates.” I thought it was a fair deal to pay for the program and then get free lifetime updates (without regular updates, an antivirus program is worthless). I assumed lifetime meant lifetime, but to McAfee it meant the “lifetime” of that particular version, which was about one year! After a year, I wasn’t able to update the virus database anymore, and the version became worthless. [Read more →]