Take deep breaths: In through the nose, out through the mouth. Peace and acceptance. Peace and acceptance.
Coming down from a tradeshow is always tough, but particularly when it's as full of activity as the ISS Vegas Expo was last week. I'm still regrouping. Last night I dreamt I couldn't find my name badge and the expo-hall security guard (a.k.a. the "tradeshow tyrant") wouldn't let me into the expo hall. Woah.
So where do I begin? First, let me apologize for falling off the blog bandwagon toward the end of the week. The show picked up so much momentum after day two that I just couldn't focus on a keyboard. It didn't help that the keyboard itself (actually, my whole darned laptop) up and walked away on Friday, along with my leather bag, Hello Kitty notepad, a lip gloss, some pens and miscellaneous receipts and paperwork. Talk about having a personal crisis. If it weren't for all the sparkley lights and lemon-drop martinis (at my favorite Las Vegas bar, Red Square), I might have really freaked out.
But now it's back to business as usual, and I know everybody (both present and absent in LV) is eager to know all about the expo. So let me just give you a few juicy tidbits.
My last entry was from Wednesday afternoon when I shared some information about the cultural diversity evident at the show. I left you in suspense with promises of pictures from the ISS Scholarship presentation. I actually did post a release on that event to our news feed. You can read it (and see a photo) here.
On Wednesday evening, a few members of the ISS staff attended a cockail reception hosted by Sentinel Systems, which the company holds annually at the Vegas expo to express appreciation to its clients. After chowing some killer spanakopita, I convinced a few of the girls to ham it up:
Aren't they just gorgeous?
A new ISS supporter also hosted a cocktail reception that night, but unfortunately, I never did make it (I tried! Really, I did! I just kept getting so distracted). My apologies to the crew at Storage Investment Advisors I understand they put on a lovely affair at RM Restaurant. These guys, formerly of the CB Richard Ellis Self Storage Advisory Group, really made a splash as one of our new exhibitors this year.
Tomorrow, I'll post photos from Thursday's cocktail reception and the first of our expo-hall videos. I had the opportunity to interview several of our vendors on the last day of the show. They gave us their impressions of the event and shared a bit about new things they're doing in the industry.
Until then, make sure you read up on the latest self-storage development: the pending acquisition of Shurgard by Public Storage. How do you think this will affect the business moving forward?