These conventioneers are boring.
I’m sure they’re nice people and all, but after midnight last night it was dead out on the streets, even for a Wednesday. Everywhere I went, the hum of the city was barely evident and while my stack at the end of the night was a little heavier than usual, for the amount of people who are here in the city right now, it felt dead.
Dreamforce may boast more attendees than Oracle OpenWorld, but gimme the Oracle folks any day. Dreamforce seems to be the more esoteric side of the tech industry, the idea guys and designers and coders – Oracle is full of salesmen and clients. While the Oracle conventiongoers may work in the tech industry, they’re businessmen first and foremost, which means they’re going out to the titty bars and drinking all night.
This current crop of conventioneers aren’t guys who are going out all night to party and as someone who was working setup at the Moscone Convnetion Center told me last night, at least half of the people who showed up for Dreamforce commuted ninety minutes or less to be there.
“It’s still good for the city,” he said. “But only fifty thousand of these guys flew in. It’s not as crazy as it feels like it should be given the amount of people who have been at Moscone during the daytime.”
Like MacWorld, a lot of the guys who’ve been coming to this convention all week are locals, and locals go back home to their places in The City or San Jose or Palo Alto or Walnut Creek when the day is over.
Besides, the salesmen at Oracle are salesmen and it doesn’t matter whether they’re selling software solutions, time share vacation homes or used cars – they’re salesmen first.
And salesmen party. They go out all night drinking and hold client meetings at titty bars, a nice dose of the Mad Men-era good old boy networking spread throughout the city when they’re in town. They may have a higher ratio of sociopaths than the folks here for Dreamforce, but they take a ton more taxis and they know how to tip.
So while the convention is winding down today, it wasn’t quite what I was expecting and I’ll be glad to see one more mass of out-of-towners be on their way, hopefully to the airport so I can snag a couple of those long rides earlier in my shift.
And I realized today that in one short month, I’ll be headed to the airport myself to go back East for Christmas. All these extra shifts will be worth it when I’m back in the DC area sitting on my ass with family and friends, eating one of Mom’s homemade pies.
Oh and grubbing down at the legendary El Pollo Rico, some of the tastiest Peruvian chicken I’ve ever had.
And well as getting a tattoo with a friend of mine, making museum time with another, giving gifts and kissing babies.
Dealing with all of the madness of these conventions and all the overtime will be worth it when I’m back in my hometown for my first Christmas in at least six or seven years.
Until then, it’s time to grind it out.
