DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

I spent Friday morning at MacWorld Expo in San Francisco. This was about my 5th time there. I think this was one of the lowest-energy shows I’ve seen.

I’d seen the press lamenting that Apple had no grand announcements, but that wasn’t the problem. I think this Expo was smaller than previous years: the corners seemed empty, and there were a lot of places to sit and chill out. The ends of the halls were curtained off. And several large vendors were not present.

For example, I was surprised DigiDesign was not there. I had specifically hoped to see them (to complain that their lame software isn’t compatible with OS9). But the “Digital Audio” area of the Expo had only a few forgettable booths and a lot of empty carpet.

The best thing about this year’s Expo is that I didn’t catch a horrible disease. I worked in a booth at the 1996 show, and after four days of exposure to imported germs and tainted business cards I felt like I wouldn’t survive the day. I spent the next 48 hours on my back with a 102° fever and vowed never to work another trade show.

I was only a tourist at this year’s show, but still I was cautious… piles of colorful schwag could be teeming with the Expo Flu, or, what the hell, Ebola, for all I knew. I washed my hands seven times in three hours.

Earthlink was giving away orange “gel” pens. I picked one up as a curiosity; I assumed there had to be more to it than what I could see, which was a ballpoint pen attached to a squat tube filled with some sort of gunk, on a lanyard. But, no, that’s all it was: pen, gunk, neck strap. When I got home, I unscrewed the end to divine if maybe there was something more there, something I missed with some sort of geek appeal, and this piece of trash dumped goo all over my desk. I curse Earthlink’s marketing department.

There was a great article on schwag in Wired recently.