I’m sitting in LAX waiting for my flight and reflecting on the past few days.  It was my first business trip for Infinio, and my first tradeshow in many years.  Here are 5 things I learned:

1. Your co-workers are key to your happiness at work.  If you aren’t sure this is true, then spend 9 consecutive hours staffing a tradeshow booth with them.  I’m lucky.  Mine are pretty awesome.

2. The buying process has really changed in the past 10 years.  We talk about how our marketing has to change because customers are more educated and do more of their research before contacting vendors, but I didn’t realize that would make tradeshows different.  But they are.  Customers were much less likely to walk up to our booth and say, “hi, what do you do?”  They were more likely to either (a) read our booth signage to see if we were relevant to them, or (b) already know about us and whether they were interested, or (c) avoid us like you do the cellphone kiosks in the mall.

3. Citrix has a very well-developed and well-honed partner program.  I was consistently impressed with the channel partners I met at the show.  They were very knowledgable about Citrix and all the ecosystem products, and they were notably enthusiastic about learning more about a technology that could help their customers.  They were a really impressive group of people who asked great questions.

4. I need to look into a standing desk.  My colleagues at the show were much more comfortable standing for long periods of time than I was.  We hypothesized that it was because of their use of standing desks.

5. The weather in Anaheim in May is lovely.  I forgot how nice it is to eat outside.