Geek Welfare: Confessions of a Convention Swag Hoarder

giving out this talk and telling people about that I was going to do a talk about trade show swag and and how much stuff I had picked up from different shows a lot of them were making jokes on the order of oh oh what did you steal it and at one point I realized I was getting too many of the any of these jokes and so I should probably explain that everything I'm I'm doing in this talk is in fact only the up and up with the exception of the story I'm about I'm about to tell you at the first show that I went to Cloud Expo which it which I'll get I'll talk more about in a moment

there was one booth that had a pull a key out of the box try to unlock the treasure chest that contains a little remote control helicopter in it and you know I I tried it it didn't work I was like I I have a set a set of lockpicks at home tomorrow I'll bring them and try and try it the second day I had forgotten them so I ended up saying the same thing the third day I brought the lock picks and I did not know how to use them but as it turned out to towards the end of it the guy who was actually at the booth was bored and I was striking up a conversation with this other girl

standing by the chest and saying I don't I don't know what I'm doing but I know how this works and and started fishing through the container of keys trying to find the one that would unlock it and that is and that is about the worst that that I've done with any of this stuff everything else else is strictly be being polite and being a good little social engineer and why is this not showing

up come on you awake so uh just to introduce my myself my name is Rachel I'm a recent graduate of Georgia Tech with a master's degree in human computer interaction and and I work as a freelance interface designer I started going to tra trade shows in the San Francisco Bay Area as a as a way to network and to fix that freelance problem and so spoiler load I haven't but I did find out some other interesting stuff along the along the way and and so the first trade show that I went to cloudex I had spoken to spoken with a friend who was who had been there in a previous year and had a promo code that I was

also a able you to use to get into to get into the show as a uh on a free pass their V what they call their VIP gold pass and

the world sorry give me a moment here

[Music]

so the so this was my first conference I didn't necessarily know what I was doing other than I had gotten a set of business cards and try I'm sorry yes can I I this was working 30 seconds ago can I please get some

assistance yeah

so like I plugged in the computer in case it was a power issue but I don't think it is and so I was there to network I was there to have a good time maybe maybe get a few free drinks along the along the way but not I wasn't actually prepared for for what I did find fine there even though I was still you know picking up little bits and pieces along along the way I think I had managed to win like a little $25 gift card from what from one booth and I was picking up smaller pieces of SW swag from the other locations and now it wakes up go figure and if I could get this to work I could

actually show you pictures of of some of the things I P I picked up one of one of them was I had taken a couple pieces of of Swag like one company was giving away a little USB wall wart another one was giving away the the cable that you could use to switch between either charging an Android device or an iPhone device and I ended up using it as an emot emergency charger during

panels but you know I was doing other things too I was paying attention to Twitter and because you know the Expo for floor was nice but it wasn't open the entire time sometimes it closed and they expected you to go to panels or you would it would close at the end of the day and I was still waiting to get picked up by up by a friend so I was trying to find certain events and parties after the show and I

was yeah I'm try yeah I'm trying that's I would like to I would like to talk I would also like my thing to do because I have visuals that I'd like to show and and so I was searching on the hashtag that they were using on Twitter for cl for cloud Expo and that's how this happened literally I was following various companies that were at the show and I was and one of the companies that I had that I had followed was apparently doing a running a cont test that I had no idea about but so apparently being [Music]

yes yes yes I I okay thank you I would like to

pause these are some sweet slides you're missing so it is worth waiting any t-shirt ah speaking of Swag yes

I'll take huh yes I well I didn't win the case I I bought the case afterwards after I actually made sure that I won I was I was supposed to have started before now I was trying to do it had worked in it was working initially and then when I started the talk it just what what happened um it did it just dropped the signal I the computer's not responding it's like I know it's I know it has a charge not sure what's going on here okay oh it may just be displaying only so if we do where is the display external display M so what key do you normally hit to see if that helps that's

fine by me I'm just looking for the display key like how do you normally tell it to display the uh to a projector I CU it may just be that it's projected only on the second screen so let's do this well it's well fine but the second screen wasn't even working one moment and we'll do may may I power off and recycle yes yeah hello you haven't Miss much what she wa her laptop crap it'll come back now and we'll we'll get it sorted all right brilliant brilliant What it just it it it wigged out it did not know what to do when we plugged in my thought was party yes oh okay no I think I think it actually Al

that great huh well they've got good whiskey cuz they know the good Scott thank you they talk the good Scott uhuh well there you go start there you have to do the something I'm Scot the whole really well I Scot part Scot history basic amounts to bunch of Ro Clans against each other and Bri English so when it comes up this time what we might want to do is I don't know how the uh if you have normally a second monitor connected at home I don't okay so let's just try again and see if we get away with with m all right don't no don't open that really okay it's good the thing about water dispos you got the gas and

start making it float up so you know you have to weigh it down still but even weighing it down because the bloat and the whole water um displacement dead body was going float Body Disposal stinks got it yeah it has practical you know you run stuff and swi them a couple times the gases out and go with the maybe a Needler just little to to to um more need I think something like a sharp and um reinforcement bar oh okay yeah hand I'll do it well there you go there we go so and oh good it looks oh good it looks normal so oh yeah is is the PA system working this time PA system is hos in this room

so up back sounds like I only hear your voice echoing in the room and not and right un the the connection box is not working the mixer in the back is not working so you're right to say it but if you project well this microphone will pick you up and we'll have you for the recording and the room will appreciate you brilliant brilliant brilliant so project like you are doing Shakespeare something like that sorry so from the top [Applause] welcome Rachel [Applause] KY yes yes so just to make it clear that that in fact everything that I'm talking about in in this talk is is on the up and up including how I won this iPad

Mini yes yes let me just tell you the the story of the one thing that I did that was slightly it Le that was slightly bending the rules which was at at my first conference Cloud Expo there was a booth there that had the stick your hand into a jar Keys pull out a key try to unlock the treasure chest when a little RC helicopter and so I tried this and obviously the first day nothing really happened I was like you know I've got a set of lock picks at home I could probably try them on this the second day I forgot but I was like go I'm bring I'm bringing the lockpicks this time I I swear I swear the third

day I brought the lock picks and I had no idea how to use them but as it turns out I was having a conversation with this other girl and the person working the booth had sort of lost interest in watching me try to use the lockpicks and and failing at it so I I eventually said said to her I don't know what I'm doing with this but I still know how the this game works and I ended up pulling the correct key out of the out of the jar keys and and everything else just simple being polite and so and social engineering so I'm Rachel I'm a recent graduate from Georgia Tech with a master's degree

I'm I'm a freelance interface designer and I also draw the science fiction comic Last Resort you may have seen some of the cards floating around floating around in the chill out area and so I've been attending conferences in the San Francisco Bay area over the past year to try and fix that freelance part I haven't but I picked up a lot of interesting things along the way I ended up getting into the F into my first conference with a promo code from a friend for what they called their VIP gold pass and yeah I I should probably explain what I'm doing here why we're even talking about Swag hoarding and I consider swag holding to be a form of social

engineering basically it's a it's a social engineering between dumb marketers with too much money and they're not using it properly they're making swag that is entirely too easy to turn into other things that have nothing to do with the company and often don't even contain their logo the the're rewarding people who are punctual not necessarily useful to them with with a lot of their different contests and they're all trying to one up each other which just leads to a lot of money wasted in a lot of different ways and I can't even call it a security leak it's more like holding out your hand to catch rainwater you you're going to get something so as I was talking with my

first conference Cloud Expo I wasn't really thinking too much about this I was you know actually there to network so I got a bunch of business C cards made I went to the to the conference I was there you know listen learn meet people hopefully do something useful and I I ended up spending a lot of time on the Expo floor mostly because every now and then I would look at some of the panels and I went to a few of the panels but for the most part I seem to find the Expo floor more interesting to in part because as I mentioned I do the comic I go to comic conventions all the time so seeing

how other companies do marketing itting is is is interesting to me and I picked up a few things like this was uh someone's attempt at a temporary tattoo I it didn't work all that all that well and this was uh some of the some of the swag I ended up getting the USB charger from one company and this is a cable that can change between the Android and the iPhone ports so I ended up using that as an emergency charger during the show while I was sitting in on some panels and after the Expo floor closed I would I would still be hanging around the area so I was trying to find some of the different After parties in the

conference center and in the nearby hotel and I was searching on the on the conference's hashtag on Twitter to try and figure out stuff so I was poking around I was following different companies I was you know trying to gather information mostly to score free booze more than anything else and this happened I I'm and I didn't even believe that it happened but it but it happened I also ended up winning a hoodie at after the show as well and ended up giving it to my dad because it was literally swam on me like a sleeping bag and I found it ridiculous I I mean I I didn't like I said I didn't even believe

that I had won the iPad until it actually was mail was mailed and arrived at my doorstep it you know hey you want a free iPad on and send the talk to us on Twitter it's like really it almost seems like a fishing attempt and in the meantime I still had everyone else and stuff that were from companies that I had no idea what idea what I was doing with no idea like they weren't interested in in necessarily hiring me at least not immed not immediately they weren't necessarily companies that I could talk to with with the folks that I was currently Contracting for and I just had to figure out something to do with them because I

did get a lot of interesting stuff it but it was also like you know I don't really care about XYZ companies and seeing their logo all the time which is where the duct tape rule came in this was a very nice Brookstone clock that had that had branding on it and it was like you know I like the clock I don't like this company so I just took a piece of masking tape covered that thing right up and you know if I can do this with with your swag then it's obviously not very good Swag like it and you know it you can honestly imagine just carrying a flat pack of duct tape with you to to a

show and just being able to instantly cover up stuff on the spot and you probably se you probably seen this in a lot of different places you've SE like the USB charer that I showed you before I cover the that up the clock up obviously little booklets notebooks books that you might get for from certain people that cover those up as well and as an attendee this is great you get free stuff and you don't even have to look at a at a company's logo will be reminded every time you you you use it but if you're a company you probably spent a lot of money on that swag and you know that's money you could have spent on

something else that would probably be a lot more useful for your bottom line it might get other people to come to your booth at the show but it's not but it's not doing you that much good but I chalked this up too I had a good time I figured out some interesting stuff I got a I got some nice things for free and then three months later this happens and one of the companies that I was talking to at the previous show had put me onto their mailing list which I probably should have unsubscribed from I unsubscribed from several but this one was like hey here's a free pass to RSA conference would you like it yes

and this time I knew what I was doing it I was figuring okay little conference I did pretty well very obviously big conference I should do great and I was right see yeah this is a short list $200 general purpose gift cards $20 in Starbucks gift cards 11 t-shirts only one of which was a woman's size USB battery charger Connect 4 two decks of cards one actually malware themed one not so much uh some light up glasses wine chubs a pebble and I I want to clarify this is not a list of the stuff that I want at the RSA conference this was Tuesday Tuesday I paid 20 bucks for the train ride up and back and I came back with

all that to put this into perspective this is how I usually look when I'm selling my comic books at conventions I could bust my butt for a whole weekend and I probably wouldn't gross as much as I profited at RSA from just wandering around looking [Music] interesting and this was mine glowing it's I mean I don't know how many of these people actually realize what what they're sitting on I mean granted you know other other people probably pay a lot to go to to these shows they're P they're paying to learn they're paying to network they're paying to do this that and the other and you know I I was there to learn and do all those all

those things as well but this was a heck of a day job and in doing this I also picked up on this phrase as being super important must be present to win it's it's a very simple phrase it's very obvious why they do it they have the stuff on site because obviously they're showing it off as a prize at the show and they TR they're trying to get things taken taken care of they don't want to ship it back they just want to deal with it right then but you'll be surprised how few people are actually present to win when I won the pebble I had was one of four people there was a drawing later

that conference for an iPad Mini that was one in six I mean who who needs Vegas they even had magicians there for goodness sake including this guy on a straight jacket I and so you know at this point I realized I had stumbled onto something that was it blew whatever sense of comprehension I had I had honestly it's very it was very strange to be there and realizing just how much is there and how much can just be skimmed off the top of what's Go's going on here and this is great but you know what does this have to do with with what we have with this with our concept of hacking and why it you know usually you think

hacking there's a reason why these flaws exist there's a way to fix them and how to take care of that and you know this is a flaw with how companies market and how they advertise and you know there's all of this money going into these trade shows that they just there's very little idea what's going on here like I said I managed to get about $1,000 dollar worth of stuff and all I had to do was show was show up and be and be polite and talk to people and if there's 6,000 attendees at each of these shows and they're doing anything near the same thing not to mention all of these companies that are spending so

much to be there to have a table to to give out this stuff not to mention whatever they're spending after the show talking to some of these people and trying to F to follow up on leads that's a lot of money that is just you know it's not being it's not being tracked very well it's probably being written off as you know the marketing budget per se and it's just as valuable as any other kind of secur security leak even more so because they're not even thinking about it and you know they're doing it because they don't want to be forgotten they the company that doesn't do enough at a trade show is not going to get any any

clients afterwards which is why they spend as much as they do in the first place and you know honestly we we understand this this is a problem they want to get what they want to get the people that they want to talk to and if a little bit goes by the wayside they're not going to worrying too much about that but there's a better way and you know some of this is there certain types of Swag that I can't find any use for whatsoever I Pens have to stop USB drives that are tiny NE need to stop I put the cut off here at 4 gigabytes because I figure 4 gigabytes you can turn that into a bootable Linux

drro and be happy with it so some better than others but even even dealing with with that gimmick swag that doesn't even deal in the logo of the company rather than something else and that's just that's just wasted stuff and if you've literally gone to the toy store and just slapped a sticker on top of the packaging as soon as as soon as the monkey peels the banana they don't kill what's on the banana peel and you know and those Starbucks cards I mentioned at least in the state of California which is where most of these trade shows took place if it's $10 or less you can go up to any Starbucks store and just ask for

cash that is free money and if you one of these trade shows that is giving PE people you a gift card just for watching a video or sitting down on a pitch imagine giving each one of those people a $5 bill you are literally saying that you have to bribe people to pay attention to [Applause] you and the good news is there swag that we can make that it that you can't use the duct tape rule on you're probably familiar with a lot of it because a lot of of it is startup type swag uh some of these lightup toys that you know they give they give at the party events or for some of the

Afterparty events obviously you can't put duct tape on that or it's not going to Glow so much if you this one was actually an ice pack it which comes in quite handy for after the party uh this was a little magnet for some reason these companies like clouds a lot and you know obviously it's it's sort of small you can't really do too much with it you could technically cover it up but that would probably ruin the look of it because it is a nice magnet and obviously it's got that little hook on it that you can't really put the duct tape over uh stress balls yeah it I know it this kind of falls into gimmicky but at the same time

it's one of the few toys you can have sitting on on your desk and give them to the college students they love them for humans versus zombies uh plushies because obviously the fabric you can't put duct tape on fabric there's good plushies and bad plushies the little blue fellow is from netsuite I think his name is Stanley and obviously you know custom plushy custom detail compared to the plush tiger with the little logo on a bandan that you could easily remove and suddenly you have a tiger with no branding stickers are are always great these are these are some of my stickers by the way because obviously you can't put duct tape on top of stickers you

just have a duct tape sticker uh same thing goes with the little LEP lapel buttons those are also kind of defeating the purpose to put tape on those as well and t-shirts are great but there's a lot of things about t-shirts obviously you noticed when she was throwing out t-shirts earlier sizing is important having women's Siz is important larger sizes are important just because obviously these people attend conferences too if the color of your T-shirt matters obviously a color T-shirt is better than a black T-shirt because you can actually have some kind of branding going on with that versus a white t-shirt which you may as well say we are too cheap we but we know we need a t-shirt here have

one and if you actually provide people with a selection of colors and designs then they have it gives them a certain sense of ownership over what they take and they might decide that they don't like any of them and that's fine too at least you've already made that selection process and M and made it more likely that they will keep the t-shirt and for God's sake make it a t-shirt I can wear in public this was given to me at the RSA conference and I pointed this out to them like but it's funny no you know what's funny this is what I turned the T-shirt into um more accurately I turned it into t-shirt yarn which is very simple that

doesn't require any sewing you're literally you're literally taking the t-shirt and cutting and a spiral around the barrel of the t-shirt on your body and you can use it to make all kinds of things like the like this was made out of t-shirt yarn this scarf is made out of t-shirt yarn and doesn't even require any sewing or crocheting or anything else I'd like that back by the way but uh feel free to uh take feel free to take a look at it and Marvel at how simp simple the construction is I'll be glad to explain how how to make those later but but he hey it's comfortable and I mean there are even folks like this lady who will take your

T-shirt and obliterate the logo if you really like the T-shirt but you just don't like the company so a bad t-shirt is how this lady stays in business and if there's any kind of personalization to the swag it it works out well this was actually done by a caricature artist at the RSA conference like the on the last day of the show I don't remember this company but I'm still holding on to it because obviously I'm not going to throw out a nice drawing you know it it works it works or here's a here's a concept give out a free demo version of your product as a swag like this company crash crash plan uh

de deals in Enterprise backup but they also have a consumer model and they're giving out a years supply of their consu consumer stuff afterwards that works quite well and if you can't come up with a better idea give them

booze just make sure we can pronounce the company's name so we know where to send people yes and any questions or yes I think this is a this is a phenomenal thought but I want to ask you it seems like the more C get I think it all snowballs now do you have any repercussions of like getting all this stuff I mean have you been getting more spam and all that stuff I don't know uh there was a bit of that a lot of these companies do te do tend to assume that hey this person came by our booth that means it's okay to put them on our mailing list and spam them which means you tend to play a

little bit of unsubscribed tag at afterwards it's an unfortunate side effect we have to stop unfortunately you did a great great job