I just spent my first day in Las Vegas at the World Market Center helping with our trade show. I checked in at the hotel and then went down to the World Market Center to join the rest of the sales team. Here we have me, Paul James, Ron Larson, Jeanie Kensinger, and Doug Edwards. Ron’s the president of the company and the rest of the team do sales. I’m in marketing, so I got to see how the displays I put together for the show looked when they all came together.
I’m staying at the Golden Nugget, which is in Downtown Las Vegas, rather than on the Strip. I was a bit tired from the busy day, so I didn’t get to see the light show on Fremont Street, but I did get to take a relatively quick trip down the Strip on the Deuce, which is the bus that runs from one end of town to the other here. It was the best way to travel: $2 for a one-way trip, and much cheaper than a cab. It took a little while since we had to stop for passengers every few blocks, but it was good to meet a few other tourists while checking out the neon lights of the Strip from the second floor of the bus.
Next Day
The trade show here has been very busy, with much better traffic than either of the two Las Vegas shows I’ve attended. Our group was able to meet with customers all through Thursday when last year the show had dropped dead around Wednesday noon. I attribute it mostly to having a much better location at the head of Pavilion 3 rather than being shoved back in a dark, forgotten corner of the Las Vegas Convention Center.
I got back to the Golden Nugget in time to see the canopy light up on Fremont street. They have a light show downtown every hour on the hour for around six minutes where they play music and display some psychedelic graphics overhead. If you’ve ever turned on “visual effects” in iTunes, this is very much the same kind of thing. Very cool!
Today, I get to babysit the trade show for one last day and visit with some of the few remaining customers we may have milling about. Then tonight, I get to pack up the show, heaving several big heavy beds into boxes and onto a palette, ready to ship back to Nebraska. I’m hoping to have enough free time tonight to visit a show before heading back home tomorrow.
Next Day
It’s the end of another week in Las Vegas. I got to manage our booth entirely on my own on Friday, which worked out all right since the show was winding down and the few people who came by the booth were mostly interested in buying our show samples for cheap. Our trucker Ray came by and we spent a couple hours tearing down the booth, and then I had the evening to myself. I didn’t think I would be able to see a show while in Vegas, but when I learned that Drew Carey and other members of Whose Line is it Anyway would be performing at the MGM Grand, I had to see it. It was excellent. I got to see Ryan Stiles, Greg Proops, Chip Esten, Kathy Kinney, performing for us, playing some of the same familiar games they played on Whose Line is it Anyway while taking suggestions from the audience and bringing members up on stage. They were hilarious–their show was just as funny as anything they’ve ever done on TV, and they were doing it all right on the spot just for us. It was the best show I’d seen in Vegas, bar none.
Today, once I made sure our show was on track to head back to Nebraska and one of our dealers here in Las Vegas got to receive a bed she’d bought from us, I was able to do some sightseeing. Mostly, I gorged at a buffet and then traveled up and down the Strip, visiting an Apple Store and getting my picture taken our by that iconic neon sign on the south end of the Boulevard. I headed over to the airport early enough to jump online for an hour or two as I waited for my flight. Somehow, it seems the airport here is the only place in Las Vegas with free wireless Internet. Go figure.
It’s been another great trip. Now to go home and catch up on some sleep!
