Tchotchke Report from DMA06

When I attend or speak at conferences, I always, like to visit the exhibit areas to see how they’re laid out, scope out which search marketing agencies are exhibiting and to visit friends from other companies and search engines. While checking out the Interactive exhibit hall here at DMA06, I noticed a few things:

There were hardly any search marketing agencies. Kevin Lee was there with Did-It and I believe I saw iCrossing. That was it. Apparently SEOInc had a booth in the other monstrous Exhibit hall that was made up of list brokers, direct mail companies,etc.

The major search engines were there (except Ask.com and AOL) as was True Local.

Google

Yahoo

Microsoft – HUGE booth.

True Local had a nice little booth next to a cluster of evergreen trees. Jake Baillie spoke at our MIMA Summit conference recently and I stopped by to say hello. While Jake wasn’t there, I did speak to the booth staffers and they presented some of the coolest tchotchkes including:

Foam missle

Yo yo’s

Laser pointer pens. Yes people, laser pens!

USB Pen

I wondered if these pens were really a lasor or some high powered flashlight. I pointed it out my hotel room window and the red dot showed very clearly on the building across the street, the sidewalk (from 8th fl) and further. Definitley a laser.

Well done True Local! I’ve noticed the amount of cool schwag at conferences going down quite a bit the past year but True Local has lifted it up at least a little bit.