Huge Crowd at ABA Techshow
I’m in Chicago, attending ABA Techshow. It’s a blowout this year – 1,200 attendees (way up from last year) and 100 exhibitors.
Coming up next: the keynote address by boy wonder Ari Kaplan, who has enjoyed a meteoric rise from being an associate for 9 years at McDermott Will in New York to social networking guru. His topic is “The Convergence of Technology and Marketing.”
Follow #techshow on Twitter.
When I picked up my press pass for ABA Techshow, I was told there would be "special seating" for the press, including bloggers and website publishers like me, for the keynote luncheon address.
The special seating out to be a row of chairs against the back wall of the ballroom. We were not going to be served anything. The program started at Noon as we watched everyone else eat a salad, a hot chicken entree and a dessert.
Later a representative from the ABA explained that they've given out 100 press passes -- because everyone who's sent a Tweet is claiming to be a reporter. Luncheon tickets to the program, which was expensive to stage, were sold out. She said they're not trying to "diss" the media.
It would be nice, though, to have working wi-fi. It's hard to believe that the wi-fi at a technology show in the Hilton Hotel doesn't function. The login -- which is username ABA and password, which is Techshow -- are an invalid login.
I'm a former Boy Scout. Our motto was "Be Prepared." So I brought my Verizon skycard which gets me online with a cell phone connection. Also, I wisely packed some bran muffins and apples in my briefcase, which I offered to my hungry fellow reporters.
