Computer Tradeshows

I recently attended the Strata + Hadoop World conference in New York and it reminded me of the first computer tradeshow I ever attended: COMDEX. I was going to school at the time and was working as a consultant to pay my way. Las Vegas was only a few hours away by car and so a couple of us loaded into one and headed down. We spent 2 days at the conference and came home with a ton of crap. None of us realized that they gave away free stuff at conferences and so we gathered something from every booth we visited. Our bags got so full, we had to find more. In the end, the conference was more about gathering and not at all about computers. Unfortunately most of the stuff I picked up was useless and got thrown away.

I'm not sure why COMDEX died but eventually it did and for that I am sad. I will always remember it as a fun place even though I didn't learn much about computers.

Fast forward through all of the conferences and tradeshows I have attended and now I realize it isn't about the free stuff I bring home, it is about learning and improving my own skills. Strata + Hadoop World is an interesting conference because it mostly revolves around processing and analyzing large amounts of data. As video games produce large amounts of data, it is very relevant to what I do. I learned a lot at the conference but also picked up a couple of T-shirts in the process. After all, I had to live up to my original COMDEX roots.