If you haven't checked out the Big Fat Marketing Blog yet and you have some interesting in the topic, I'd say go for it. I particularly liked this post on surviving the DMA fall show, which offers sage advice like, "never, ever eat the dim sum in the exhibit hall." And this:
- 1. Never get on a boat.
2. Never get on a bus.
Why boats? Because four hours is too long to be trapped with postal sortation equipment salesman. I never go anywhere that I can’t get back from on my own. And I’m a poor swimmer.
But busses are worse because most of us ride them from the hotels to the exhibit hall. We forget how insidious they are.
I once took one in Hawaii to a so-called luau. We rode for hours on a state highway—I didn’t know Oahu was that wide—and found ourselves in a park next to a gravel pit. We sat at picnic tables, eating cold food from aluminum trays while assorted DMers danced the hula on stage (it was the only way to stay warm).
Hate to admit it, but I feel sort of the same way. The thought of being stuck somewhere, dependent on someone else's schedule to get out while the getting's good, is a tough one. And I'll never forget the bus from Red Rocks amphitheater back to downtown Denver after an ASAE event a few years ago that somehow wandered around for 45 minutes before pulling into a Home Depot parking lot in Arvada to call for directions...