Laborations

Late at night, sitting in the system test lab, the conversations reach a philosophical level rarely seen since the days of the Algonquin round table. Hour upon hour spent contemplating red and green LEDs and flickering computer monitors (hey, adjust that refresh rate, you goober!) can lead to some of the deepest, most introspective exchanges that seem to make enormous sense at the time but are usually best left alone by the light of day.

We take you back to another time and place, where three lowly technicians are sitting in a dimly lit lab somewhere in Silicon Valley while the all-important Release 1.0 hardware and software are being put through a series of tests to ensure that they will not burst into flames after a few hours of continuous operation. We will call our laborators A.J., G., and Johnny. Those aren't their real names, of course. The names are changed to protect the innocent (currently typing these words) from the surly.

A.J.: Dude, are you sure you've got that set up right.

G.: Yea, I'm sure. I followed the directions exactly. See - the lights are all green.

A.J.: OK. Just checking. Hey, you guys seen "28 Days Later" yet?

Johnny: Yea, right. I have kids. The last movie I saw was "Finding Nemo".

G.: I hear ya. I don't even see TV anymore unless it's animated. We're into "Caillou" now.

Johnny: Oh yeah. We've got the Caillou thing going, too. Plus "Thomas" and "Jay Jay".

A.J.: OK, what are Thomas and Jay Jay. Sounds like Swedish porn.

*silence. count to three.*

Johnny: Thomas and his friends are trians with faces that have innane little stories with morals. The faces don't move, except for the eyes. And sometimes they clip different faces onto the trains to make them change expression. Happy face, sad face, excited face. Like that. The kids really love it.

G.: And there's about a million little toys that you have to buy to go along with it. Little trains and tracks...

Johnny: You have the Thomas Table yet?

G.: Yea, we got that one last birthday. It's covered in broken track right now. i found my wallet buried under it last week.

A.J.: Dudes, you guys are scaring me.

Johnny: Now for really scary, you have to see "Jay Jay the Jet Plane". It's the same idea as Thomas, but with airplanes. And it's animated so the faces move. Computer animation, so it looks 3D. The planes are just freaky.

G.: Not as many toys, though.

Johnny: Sometimes when I watch the airplanes with the kids, I start imagining alternate endings. Like, you know the one with the butterfly that's Jay Jay's friend?

A.J.: No.
G.: Yeah

Johnny: Have you ever wondered why the butterfly doesn't get sucked into the jet engines?

*silence. count to four*

Johnny: Seriously, even if the one butterfly doesn't get sucked in, the plane ends up following him to the hideout where thousands of butterflies live. There's no way he could take off without incinerating a few hundred. At the very least, I wanted to see him get back home with a few squished bugs stuck on the windshield.

A.J.: Dude, you need to get out more.

G.: Well, I have wondered if Savannah and Big Jake ever get it on.

A.J.: OK, now it's definitely porn. What are Savannah and Big Jake?

Johnny: Savannah's a fast plane with a bad southern accent. Big Jake's a big cargo plane. And no, that's one I hadn't thought of now. But thank you so much for the mental image. I'll be sharing that one with a therapist next week.

G.: Seriously. There are kid planes and adult planes. Obviously the kid planes have to grow up sometime. And they have to some from somewhere. Even planes have needs.

A.J.: Your brain is really starting to go there, G-Man. Planes have needs?

G.: You gotta make the shows interesting somehow. Like imagining hunters bagging Barney in the middle of a show and stuffing him and putting him in a museum next to the other dinosaurs. Stuff like that.

A.J.: Your wife know you've got this defect, man?

G.: Yeah, like I'm dumb enough to tell her about that.

Johnny: We need to come up with something like those shows. You know, the woman that's running the "Thomas" gravy train is a multi-millionaire? There's gotta be another one of those out there just waiting to be thought up. Like something in telecom. Talking telephones or something.

A.J.: Dude, even people in this business don't think it's that interesting. How about talking race cars? Kids love race cars, right? Or power tools. Or maybe rodents. You know, families of squirrels looking for nuts. You could sell stuffed squirrels and bags of nuts.

G.: I think those are all covered already. How about talking computers? It would be educational - teach the kids how to use a computer and stuff. Plus there'd be a family of peripherals.

Johnny: Like Mickey, the Mouse.

G.: Exactly! No wait ... very funny.

Johnny: They've gotta have wheels or something. Kids want to move them around. I like the race cars.

A.J.: Yea, there's hundreds of different car types. They could sit in the garage and talk. And there could be a mechanic that takes care of them and teaches them stuff like that Brenda Blue chick.

*pause for effect*

Johnny: Um, A.J., how do you know about Brenda Blue.

A.J.: Ah, you talked about her. With the airplanes.

G.: No, we didn't. We didn't mention her at all.

Johnny: You watch kids shows! What else? Sesame Street?! Oh, this is going to be fun for a long time in so many ways.

A.J.: No .. but .. I .... OK, maybe I watched it once ...

Johnny: Hey, G. Aren't we supposed to be recording this test?

G.: Yea, why?

Johnny: Isn't that computer supposed to be on or something.

*silence. count to ten.*

G.: Crap.

Lemmings

The one group most responsible for the bubble and its subsequent messy explosion is not, as you may have heard, the executives at Worldcom (although they certainly can be assigned some of the blame). It was a group of shadowy figures known as VCs. VCs are typically very wealthy individuals (and getting more wealthy every day - more on that later) who control the purse strings of huge funds put together by people who don't want to have to deal directly with those strange engineering types who are always coming up with the good ideas. Every VC truly believes that they are the smartest person in the world at investing money, and every one believes that they independently come up with the best places to put other people's hard-earned cash. This is much like, I imagine, every lemming in the herd thoroughly believing that they have made a conscious decision to run over the cliff independently of any other lemming that may happen to be running in the same direction.

Disclaimer:We here at Telecommedy are fully aware that lemmings don't really run off of cliffs and that it was all a hoax set up by some malicious documentary directors, probably employed by Disney. Or something like that. We have trouble caring, and are not in the least interested in learning more on the subject, so please refrain from the long scathing emails and solicitations to join PETA.

In the late 90s, the VC lemmings decided en masse that Telecomm was the place to put money. Telecomm was being touted by analysts on Wall Street. (Actually, the analysts were typically inside the buildings around Wall Street. The only people who regularly "tout" on Wall Street are generally living in abandoned buildings and carboard boxes and are ignored by even the slowest of the lemmings.) Suddenly anyone who could make PowerPoint slides was getting investment dollars. New VC funds sprung up all over, but the most insidious by far originated on an otherwise unremarkable road in the middle of nowhere, California known as "Sand Hill Road". These funds poured money into companies like Tequila into college sutudents.

Feeding Frenzy
Before long, the big telephone companies got caught up in the frenzy. They started talking to - and believing - the lemmings. Some key employees even left the telephone companies to join the lemmings (no conflict of interest there - it's all in your head, and you wouldn't understand the subtleties even if we explained it to you with two by fours to the head). The stock options started flying like seal blubber in a feeding frenzy. Telephone companies started forming their own groups of lemmings to get in on the frenzy. Some just skipped any appearance of propriety and let the executives invest directly into companies whose equipment they were evaluating. (Don't make me get out the 2x4 again. It's perfectly legal and explainably ethical after a few martinis and a soulectomy.)

Before long, there were more lemmings than food. The law of supply and demand started driving up the costs of investing and, consequently, the perceived value of the companies looking for money. True story: at a major Geeknik show, my company had a lemming come by our booth and actually break down in tears when he heard that we had already closed our last round of funding and were not accepting new investors. Real tears! And this was for a company with a very shaky business plan and a lemming who knew little to nothing at all about us. If your humble scribe been thinking fast enough, we would have whipped out a PowerPoint slide or two and started our own company right then while his defences were down. Something like "feedmykidsandbuymeaporche.com". Our reseach makes us relatively certain that it would have been wildly successful.

Lemmings are Smarter then You Are
As the downturn started and the bubble began to burst, the lemmings predictably changed course. Within a matter of months, they went from blindly pursuing anything telecomm related to blindly divesting of anything that smelled like telecomm. Sure, there were a lot of just awful companies that were killed off (Did you invest in SilkRoad? Do you admit it in public? If you've never heard of SilkRoad, just count you blessings, kiss your children/pets/computer, and keep reading in the serenity that comes from ignorance.), but in their blindness, the lemmings killed off some good companies as well. A lot of quite interesting innovations are gone forever as a result, and the telecomm industry is the worst for it. What's important for this discussion, however, is that the lemmings still believe that they are smarter and better at this whole investing game than you, the lowly ordinary human, could ever hope to be.

We here at Telecommedy have had the good fortune to actually sit in on a few VC meetings where they explain to companies why the plug is being pulled. This was "good fortune" as it provided many hilarious comments and time consuming stories that can be repeated in bars to obtain free beverages. One of our personal favorites was a meeting where the head lemming explained to the CEO of one of his subservient companies why the lemmings were leaving the telecomm buisiness. His quote was, "You may know your business, but we're the smart ones here when it comes to investing money." This from a lemming who had lost millions of his investor's dollars on telecomm companies that crashed and burned spectacularly. However, since he had made money on a few early investments (nearly all lemmings made money in the early days just by spreading cash around and waiting for desperate large companies to buy out interesting small ones), he believed that his success was a product of his own intellect. But it's the follow-on quote that had us snickering in our sneakers "You can try another VC firm. We're all pretty independent and they may have a different idea." Sure they would.

So, to paraphrase, all of the lemmings running headlong in the same direction means that each of them has made an individual and rational choice that this is the best direction to run. And the looming cliff up ahead definiely wasn't there when they started and must have been caused by some less intelligent non-lemmings who just don't understand the lemming way of thinking. Really, the comedy in telecomm just writes itself sometimes.

Cream skimming
So, you might ask, now that the bubble has burst, surely the lemmings have learned their lessons. Well, not exactly. Most of them hit the bottom of the cliff, bounced off of the crushed bodies of the smaller lemmings, and kept running. This time in perhaps a different direction (watch out biotechnology - they're headed your direction), but still in a happy little group of independent-thinking furry bodies.

And the best part of all of this is that the lemmings are still paid wildly out of step with the humans whom they have left behind. Most lemmings are paid a percentage of the total velue of their investment fund, whether or not their decisions are working out in the end. For example, a lemming fund of 1 billion dollars might pay each partner lemming over 10 million dollars a year. But they deserve it, don't they? After all, they are so much smarter than you are and they have made such rational decisions, haven't they.

Just to clarify. We here at Telecommedy are not bitter. We are jealous. If you would like to invest in the Telecommedy Venture Fund, please send personal checks and money orders to telecommedy.blogspot.com. Nothing less than $10,000 please, we have standards.

Pop! Goes the Bubble

I know you've heard of the bubble. It's the mysterious force that appeared around 2001 and shrank your 401(k), took your job, and ogled your wife when you weren't looking. For those of us who lived in the bubble, it was a beautiful place, filled with happy people, optimism, milk, and honey (the milk and honey were usually added to lattes). Now that it is gone, some of us still like to gather in the local watering hole and reminisce about days gone by.

How much do you want?
In the heyday of the bubble, godd employees (and many mediocre employees) received recruiter calls on a daily basis. These grew increasingly ridiculous as the frenzy exploded, moving from calls gauging interest to calls offering outrageous employment packages (moving expenses! stock options! company car! supermodel!). It made everyone feel wanted, and allowed employees a chance to take some risks. The most popular sentiment, one that was heard in nearly every startup company, was "If they fail, I'll just get another job at another company making more money." And it was true - working at a company that failed was not seen as a blot on your record, but instead as valuable startup experience, especially if you were an officer (CEO, CTO, VP of Anything) in the failed company. And no, that has nothing to do with why so many companies failed in the end. Really.

Most of the startup companies of the bubble era were located in California, although a significant number sprung up in the Dallas and Boston areas. When the boom was really ... um, "booming", there were startups in every corner of the globe. However, there was no reason to despair if you didn't live near a startup, as most of them had nearly unlimited travel budgets and would let you live just about anywhere that you wanted to. Relocation packages were incredibly generous and teleworking was popular for just about everyone except hardware engineers (no, even in those heady days you couldn't get a company to build a lab in your basement for you). Even in California, employees would commute long distances by living in the Hills and working in the Valley. (Ok, that sounds like something out of a revisionist Civil War drama starring Australian actors, but it's not. Ask a Californian for details. Most are more than willing to explain this issue to you ad nauseum.) Since people were working very long hours, they just crashed at work or in a company-rented apartment nearby. True story: it was possible during the boom to pull into the parking lot of a seedy condominium complex in San Jose and park next to a dozen cards that each cost more than the condos. They pay was great, the lifestyle not so much.

Optional reading
One of the more coveted items of the telecomm bubble era was the stock option. Nearly everyone has heard the phrase, but very few really understand the concept. Basically, the company gives an employee, investor, friend of the officer, ex-wife of the officer, or customer the right to purchase stock in the company at a certain price. That price is ludicrously low - usually pennies - but it's still a lot more than the startup company is worth at the time that the options are granted. The employee then works like a dog for years in the hopes that someday, somehow, the company will go public ("IPO") or get sold ("cash in") and the options will be worth something more than the option price ("strike price"), at which time the IRS ("insert profanity here") will take away most of the gains to pay for important government expenses ("Congressional swimming pool").

Unbeknownst to many people, but knownst to option-holding telecommies, there is an insidious law in the US called the AMT (Alternative Minimum Tax, or Aggravating Money Transfer) that appears to be specifically designed to attack innocent, hard-working, loyal, puppy-petting, kitten-loving, baby-kissing telecomm workers. Here's how it works. You, Mr. Employee are granted a small bucketfull of stock options at 10 cents apiece. You don't actually pay money for them, you can't sell them to anyone, and you don't actually own all of them until you labor here for the next four years, but they are yours nonetheless. At the end of your four-year incarceration, your company is one of the luck few to go public. The stock is now trading at 10 dollars, and you have started pricing out a Porche turbo that costs more than your college tuition. But, of course, you can't sell them yet. Employees are "locked in" and can only watch as investors (who never worked for the company and can't even spell SONET) trade the stock for enormous returns. Six months later, the lockup ends and you decide to actually pay for your options so that you can sell them at your leisure. You write a check to the company for 10 cents per share AND THEN PAY TAXES ON A GAIN OF $9.90 PER SHARE. That's right, even without ever selling the stock and without ever realizing a penny in gain, you owe a HUGE amount to the US government. Sounds fair, no?

But wait, it gets better. Suppose you believe in your company and are convinced that it will be the one to weather the coming storm. You don't sell your stock and eventually it drops to 10 cents a share. No harm, no foul - right? You took a risk, but at least you didn't lose money. WRONG! Your friendly neighborhood IRS agent still wants that AMT. Yep, you can actually lose money on the stock and still have to pay AMT on the initial purchase. There are hundreds of people who bought their stock options and didn't make enough to pay the taxes in the end. There are even some who took out loans from the company to exercise their options early (a way to avoid AMT - you're buying when they're only worth 10 cents). These people actually OWE money to their company for something that they never owned. Imagine how fun that scenario is - you get laid off and get a bill for your options at the same time. It's like having your girlfriend break up with you and stealing your car, too, although with less chance of a good-bye snuggle.

The few, the proud, the lucky bastards
Yes, there are some people who made money during the bubble, and more power to them. Anyone who worked long, hard hours for little pay deserves to make a few bucks in the end. Many people who made money on their initial stock options put the money into other telecomm stocks and lost their shirts in a more complex process than simply failing and having the IRS take their house. However, a lucky few took their money out of telecom at just the right time. Maybe they were smart, maybe they were lucky. Personally, I consider them smart when I need a loan and lucky when they refuse to see the merits of my request, but you can judge them in whichever way your personal religion allows.

The bubble was fun. Geekniks were huge parties, nearly everyone was in a good mood, obscure relatives thought you were smart, and high-school reunions were an opportunity to gloat. Now that the bubble has popped, most telecommies are back to working at a normal pace - some with a little more debt, some with a turbo Porche parked in the garage. And nearly everyone is just waiting for the next bubble to come along so that THIS time they can do it right. Because surely we won't make the same mistakes this time - plus we still have 28 payments left on the Porche.

Piled Higher and Deeper

The most cherished acronym in the life of many Telecomm employees is PhD. Telecomm is crawling with PhDs. Some are obvious in their dress, their manner, or their insistence on being called "Doctor". Others are more subtle and can only be seen at night on certain days of the month. Overall, though, PhDs are an interesting sub-species in Telecomm, and one that is worth some study if you don't have something more interesting to do (movie, television, book, root canal, ...).

PhDs generally come in two types. The first type is the one that usually shows up in the mass media - the geeky type with little to no social skills that is more often than not shown as a bumbling idiot and held up to ridicule be people with very, very tiny IQs. In the real world, this sub-species deserves respect, as its members are responsible for many of the greatest advances of the human race (as well as many rather less interesting advances in obscure topics that are of little benefit to any other varieties of human beings).

Care and Feeding of your Type 1 PhD
Type 1 PhDs are very rarely seen by the public, as they prefer to dwell alone in dark caves and work 18 hours a day on their pet projects. A large percentage dwell in University laboratories, although a singnificant number also reside in private industry. Type 1s generally are not interested in communicating with others, although they will publish occasionally as a way of ensuring food supply. If you are lucky enough to own a Type 1 PhD, be happy and treat them well. They require very little care and can be enormously useful in solving problems or just keeping the computer network alive.

If left alone, the Type 1 will labor happily and bring success to those who feed him. They are, in general, very gentle although easily spooked. Try to avoid speaking to your Type 1 about activities that are not direclty related to his work (sports, movies, music, hygiene, etc.), as this can create confusion. The occasional Type 1 has crossed the blurry line between genius and madness (it can be fun to hop back and forth, just remember to leave breadcrumbs so that you don't get stuck on the wrong side), but even then it almost never happens that a Type 1 will go on a killing spree with a plasma rifle that they have been secretly developing on the side using old microwave television parts. So, don't worry about that.

Type 1s do require some guidance. If left entirely on their own, they have a tendency to drift off into strange and useless research topics of little interest to any other humans. While this may be acceptable for University PhDs, in general it is not a good use of funds if you actually want results that are of value to others. Usually, a few simple questions are enough to guide your Type 1 in the right direction. Examples such as "Is it possible to build equipment that runs entirely on old beer cans and discarded gum wrappers" should keep them pleasantly docile and productive for years.

The Type 2 PhD
The Type 2 PhD is harder to pin down. This type of PhD generally has a personality that allows it to interact with others, which makes it a much less predictable sub-species. Type 2s can be aggressive - not necessarily a bad thing if managed - as well as vain, annoying, and/or pompous.

If you are lucky enough to get a Type 2 with a good personality, it can be a nice addition to your family. Unfortunately, Types 2s with good personalities are rarely working in their selected field of study, and are usually no longer able to contribute technically. However, they can still be of enormous value as translators, as the PhD attached to their name often enables them to communicate with other PhDs. Type 2s with good personalities often get shunted into areas where they can cause the least amount of damage while remaining visible to the outside world. Therefore, typical telecom titles for Type 2s with good personalities include Director of Business Development, VP of Marketing, or CEO.

The far more prevelant Type 2 PhD is the type with a bad personality. These are the ones that require that everyone call them "Doctor", contribute very little other than noise to their owners, and have an extremely inflated version of their own importance to the ecosystem. Type 2s are often reluctant to reveal their actual PhD Thesis Topic, as it rarely has any relevance to the work that they are now performing. The work is either ridiculously out of date ("Vaccum Tube Use in the Apollo Moon Landings") or obscure ("Pattern Recognition in the Decimals of Pi"). In Universities, Type 2s almost always have tenue. In private industry, they almost always work in the Engineering department. If you are unlucky enough to have a Type 2 with a bad personality, don't panic. They can be controlled by massive numbers of committee meetings and ISO9000 process management.

Enjoy your PhDs
In general, the PhD is a rare sub-species and one that should bring you hours of enjoyment. Regardless of the type that you own, most PhDs will provide hours of entertainment and value to your life. And if you happen to encounter one in the wild, be sure to treat it with respect - from a distance.

Disclaimer: The above descriptions and instructions do not apply to liberal arts PhDs. Please consult your non-Telecomm field manual for information on other PhD types.

Geeknik

Once in a while the telecomm gophers come out of their holes and gather for a huge shindig in some dingy convention center, typically near some sort of entertainment venue like Disney World, Buckhead, Bourbon Street, or ... something in Chicago (I'm sure it's a lovely place to spend a weekend - perhaps at the old slaughter pens). It's very similar to a major salmon migration with very little opportunity for spawning. One of the largest of these conventions - Supercomm - was for many years held in Atlanta, often at the same time as a huge influx of black college students for a Spring Break party known as Freaknik. Both groups were geneally very friendly to each other, and the interaction between the two groups was often quite amusing (imagine portly, bearded engineers getting down to the latest hip-hop rhythms, if you have a vivid enough imagination and strong enough stomach). The Atlanta media created the name Geeknik for Supercomm as a counterweight for Freaknik, and it has stuck - at least with my lovely wife who still likes to bring it up once or twice a day. Therefore, all telecomm tradeshows have now been christened "Geeknik" by those in the know (about three of us now, I believe, although I think the dog is catching on).

Geekniks are the only reason for the existence of many telecomm employees, especially the more attractive ones. Months before each show are spent working on overwrought graphics, cheesy give-aways, invitations to customers who aren't planning to attend anyway, and demonstrations of equipment that's not quite ready for the light of day yet. The week before the show is a frenzy of activity akin to cutting the heads from a flock of chickens right after feeding them all a cocktail of methamphetamine and Starbucks' cappucinos. Nothing pertaining to the peripheral business of selling and installing products gets done during this time, and many spouses begin to re-consider their decision to marry into the industry. Then the show happens, and for that week or so, the only business to be done is shmoozing and building on the expense account. And, of course, the months following are filled with the usual returning to normalcy, evaluations of performance, planning for improvements, and forestalling divorce proceedings. That comes to at least one full-time job in a small company and an entire department's worth of full-time jobs at less organized companies (not that I'm going to mention any names like Lucent, as that would be patently wrong of me).

Vendor Vittles
At most shows, the network owners and operators are treated as walking gods by the equipment and service vendors. True story - one network provider does not allow their employees to expense ANY meals during Geeknik. They are expected to find a vendor to pay for every one. The policy is called "Vendor Vittles". Truly, I am not erudite enough to make this stuff up. At some of the really big shows, content providers (companies like ESPN, ABC, HBO, FOX, and *ahem* Hustler) lavish the network guys with even more elaborate giveaways. It is not surprising to see low-level employees from a telephone or cable company walking around with two or three duffle bags stuffed with give-aways like cups, hats, T-shirts, stuffed animals, videos, children's toys, CDs, pens, electronic gizmos, oddly-shaped chocolates, bottles of liquid, shiny objects, bouncy balls, phone numbers, hotel keys, and much, much more. At some of the smaller Geekniks, the local mom-and-pop network operators show up with their families. The families don't even make a pretense of asking about the products for sale. Like a shark on the prowl for baby seals, they stalk the floor collecting junk that will become Christmas and Hannukah/Channuhak/Chewbakkah gifts for obscure relatives for the entire next year.

Exhibiting companies, of course, are glad to support the habits of the network operators, and compete to see who can get the largest number to actually enter their booth. In the heady days of the telecomm bubble, when money was freely available to anyone who understood how to draw colorful pictures in PowerPoint, the hustles were impressively audacious. The minimum requirement was to staff the booth with "booth babes" - typically young, attractive women that may or may not actually know anything about the products in the booth. (As an aside, I am not referring to anyone at Movaz Networks as a booth babe, so no suing me for my accumulated wealth.) For more flashy companies with less actual information available to attract customers, more impressive techniques were used to attract "customers". These schemes included raffles of large electronics (TVs, Bose radios, CD players, lightsabres, etc.), performances by dancing girls in company-colored outfits slightly larger than handkerchiefs, games and activities (golf, video games, skeet shooting, etc.), and the super grande indulgence of the time - performances by major musicians, comics, and aquatic mammals. In a single day, Geeknik attendees could go to a free performance by Ray Charles, Martin Short, and Shamu the Killer Whale. Not all at the same time, although I'd certainly pay to see Ray play the piano while Shamu eats Martin. Of course, these expenses had absolutely nothing to do with the money that you lost in your 401k, so don't even try to follow that bouncing ball.

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain
Geekniks can be a powerful incentive to get products working on a strict deadline. Alternatively, they inspire great creativity among those whose equipment does not cooperate within the strict deadline. Non-working equipment is sometimes hollowed out and 9-volt batteries attached to LEDs to make the equipment appear functional. Demonstrations that purport to show signals traveling through a compex array of equipment are actually bypassed by a single wire and some duct tape. True story: one of the more obnoxious employees of an potential purchaser of telecomm equipment was known for walking up to equipment during the show and kicking it to see if it was actually working (after which the delicately balanced equipment often stopped working - you're really not supposed to kick these things). Equipment vendors put up with him since he was viewed as a player at a potential customer. Now that the bubble has burst, he is rumored to be driving a cab and receiving very small tips when he carries vendors to and from the convention centers during Geekniks.

If a company dares to show "static" displays of products not actually working at a Geeknik, they are ridiculed as either incompetent or unimaginative. This can lead to crying and slap-fights, so smaller companies that are worried about being humiliated on the playground often use the "private suite" strategy. That's when a company rents out a suite at a nearby hotel and sets up a grand dispay, then sends out "private invitations" to their best friends in the industry. Since the whole point of putting a lot of product vendors in the same convention center is to allow customers to quickly get from one to another, it can be very tough to convince a customer to leave the confines of the center and venture into the unknowns of a hotel room. (Coincidentally, that is also one reason that there is very little "spawning" at Geeknik. The other reasons are that men outnumber women by about 1489 to 1 and the attractiveness quotient of nearly all attendees doesn't register on most accepted scales.) In order to convince a customer to come to a private suite, therefore, companies must offer enticements, usually catering and sometimes an open bar (there can be nothing more entertaining than drunken engineers out on the town). Not coincidentally, customers often schedule visits to private suites around meals. I've personally watched customers walk into a private suite, snub the provided food, and ask the company representative to order them a sandwich. The private suite is alive and well since the bubble burst, as it allows companies to spend less money and still justify a trip to someplace far away where entertainment is cheap and the giveaways are plentiful.

The most hideous encarnation of the private suite is the private suite in the booth. Usually there are rules in place to force anyone who puts up an exhibition to make the exhibit open to the public. At least a significant portion of the booth should be viewable by anyone who shows interest. In some cases, it is understandable to put some of the latest secrets in a special section available only to VIPs (Violet, Interesting Penguins), but the occasional company takes this idea to the far extreme. Companies have been known to build walls completely around their booth and put a bouncer at the only door. When trade show operators objected and changed the rules so that over 50% of the booth area had to be publicly accessible, they bought a bigger booth space and built their walls in the center. The outside part, with absolutely nothing in it, was publicly accessible. I believe that most people wandering by used it as a convenient garbage disposal area in recognition of the ingenuity of the booth designer.

The Big Show
Supercomm, one of the biggest of the Geekniks, is scheduled for June 2004 in Chicago. For the last 5 years it's been in Atlanta, and finally the powers that be are going to allow the telecomm world out of the Southeast to inflict their particular brand of mayhem on the Midwest. People of Chicago, board up your doors and lock the livestock in the barns. (Not that Geeknik will impact you personally, it's just that we've started to notice the holes in your homes and the cow keeps getting into our vegetable patch, so we'd appreciate more dilligence on your part.) All over the telecomm world, people are getting ready for the big show. Shoes are being polished, hideous "trade show shirts" are being handed out, equipment is being whacked with hammers in frustration, and the local bars are stocking up on cheap domestic beers.

Let the games begin, and have a great show everyone! I'll be the one hiding under the table in the corner, taking notes, and trying to avoid the cows.