By Mike King
I bumped into an ex-colleague at IP Expo as she was trying to maintain order among a long queue of people waiting to have their photograph taken with Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak. Wozniak gave the keynote speech at the show and was hanging around for general adulation and photo opportunities.
She described meeting Wozniak as her trade show high point in close to 20 years in the IT industry. Meeting Wozniak was even better, she claimed, than the time she met Trevor Brooking (or Sir Trevor as he became in 2004), at InfoSec I think she said it was.
I’m not sure that I’d agree with her that Wozniak tops Sir Trevor, but each to his own.
My own greatest trade show moments aren’t really in the same league. The high point is a toss-up between meeting an aging ex-wrestler and meeting two of the ITV Gladiators team.
Meeting ex-World of Sport wrestler Mick McManus was easily the funniest. He was at the now defunct Networks show sometime in the late 90s working on the next stand to one of my clients. He must have been about 70 and the whole thing was pretty bizarre, particularly his dyed black hair. My client thought it was funny to introduce me to him as ‘his biggest fan’. All I can say is that Mick takes himself very seriously and didn’t see the joke.
My other trade show high point was meeting Jet and Wolf from Gladiators (first time round) at TMA in Brighton. Lycra and telecoms had a natural affinity back then. Oh the glamour of it all.
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