Connectzone goes to Vegas! (for the Interop trade show)

Guest Blogger, Cable Geek

When ConnectZone decided to exhibit at the 2009 Interop show this year, we knew it was going to be a big deal. How big, we had no idea. One thing you can say about things in Las Vegas: they will never leave you disappointed.  It may leave you broke, or feeling like your soul needs a shower, but there is no such thing in Vegas as “going halfway”. The 2009 Interop show was no exception.

This is one of the bigger shows of its type.  From their website: “Interop is the leading global technology event, with the most comprehensive IT Conference and Exhibition available. Business and technology leaders attend Interop to get the most up to date information available on key technologies, learn about the latest trends and meet with leading vendors.” Like ConnectZone, for instance. 

This Geek has done plenty of trade shows before and even attended Iterop in Vegas many years ago. It was before the Internet bubble burst and the sky was the limit. The memories have all but faded of the circus-like atmosphere: the Rent-a-babes (to draw foot-traffic), hired performers (acrobats and magicians), and professional impersonators (Austin Powers was big that year).

Now that I typed that out, it sounds a lot like a 12 year old boy’s dream birthday party.  That’s weird…

This year’s Interop show, held at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center,  was less frenetic and more focused on increasing ROI (a fancy term for “saving money”); a reflection of the current economic conditions worldwide. Because ConnectZone has been helping  customers get more for their money since its inception, it was natural to exhibit at Interop this time around.

Even though we are best known for cables and connectivity, we decided to highlight ConnectZone’s new line of metal products (cabinets, racks, shelves) and power distribution units (PDU’s).  With so much concern about budget these days, and limited brand choices with these products, we anticipated many companies would be looking for a better deal.  Judging by the response we got at the show, we were right on the money, pun intended.

Our metal products are displayed on our website, but we are always getting new stuff, so add it to your favorites and check back often.

The big hit at our booth was a new line of PDU’s. They have digital amp usage readout and are IP addressable, which allows you to monitor usage and even reboot equipment through the Internet. Lots of “ooh’s” and “ahh’s” over that, as you can imagine.

Our cables, though, did not get relegated to the shadows somewhere.  The Cable Geek would have none of that!   We displayed our popular CX4 cables, for 10 Gigabit data speeds. We also showed off our fiber Mode Conditioning “Launch” cables and our special Ultra-flexible DS3 cables, which we can customize in custom lengths and configurations.

The other hot item at the show was our swag: ConnectZone bottled water! The temperature outside is above 100 degrees, and guess what everyone craves? H2O, that’s what!

We met some really nice people there, both attendees and exhibitors.  In my experience, the IT world is filled with genuinely likeable and polite people, almost without exception.  Something about working in a field that is cutting edge and constantly evolving that draws a certain, well, geeky personality. That must be why this Cable Geek felt at home, as if in a GI-NORMOUS room full of fellow geeks.

Panicking Never Helps Anything

It doesn’t matter what you are talking about in life, panicking will only make things worse. At home, at work, during a true bloodletting emergency, fear and panic will not help you. The only solution I have ever found is to tell myself, often loudly “it is only (fill in the blank)”. The “blank” could be blood, pain, fear of failure, fear of rejection, fear of public speaking, dying in a plane crash, failing a test, losing your job, stock market crash or being eaten by a shark while swimming. Taking a firm and confident mental position will help you, here are some thoughts.

At one point in my life I was a trained “first responder” as well as certified to teach Red Cross first aid and CPR. Rule #1, secure yourself and your situation, one disaster is bad enough-don’t make it two disasters. So if you stop to help at a car accident, make sure your car is blocking traffic from hitting YOU so you can assist others. If you happen to run into an electrical emergency, shut off the power before you touch anything-better to be safe than electrocuted, you can’t help anyone if you are being electrocuted. If someone has fallen through frozen ice, get them a rope or branch, take off your shirt or jeans and throw it out to them, do not try to walk on the ice out to save them. It sounds like common sense right? But the thing is when panic takes over common sense, calm clarity and critical thinking go right out the window.

Before I go further I want you to click this link and start the music-reduce the window and come back to me.

Here is how it starts for me; I generally start by holding my breath, which after a short period of time makes me dizzy. Around the time I start to feel dizzy I know I am panicking-so I remind myself to breath. Immediately things get better. Then the song you are listening to, well it starts playing inside my stomach which makes white caps in my little sea of stomach acid. (BTW you should recognize this music-it is played in several famous slasher and satanic movies).

 Then I say to myself “Jemma, go to solution” and more often than not it flips a switch in me. It reminds me that if I am panicking I am not going to finish the physics test. If I panic, I am not securing my life preserver on the sinking ship. Panicking doesn’t help you perform effective CPR. Panicking, while totally natural, is essentially useless so save you or anyone else. Panicking was designed to increase your sympathetic nervous system responses so that in an emergency there would be more blood flow to large muscles to you could run away from a bear. A stimulated sympathetic nervous system increases blood flow to your ear drums so you can hear better and increases the size of your pupils to let more light in so you can see with better acuity. Adrenalin released in panic mode causes constriction in your bronchial tubes so you can increase the volume of oxygen you can take in and make it available to your body to do work in an emergency. Stimulation of the sympathetic nervous system makes it so you don’t notice if you are hungry or have to go potty-I suppose because if a bear is chasing you-it’s not a good time to stop for a sandwich. Adrenalin released by your sympathetic nervous systems constricts blood vessels so you bleed less if injured. The other funny stuff like an upset stomach, feeling dizzy-well that is all just silly side effects from the adrenalin. If you know about these silly side effects you can talk your way through them and control them rather than they control you.

When I worked in emergency veterinary medicine, guess what the busiest day of the year was? 4^th of July. Animals generally don’t appreciate fireworks; they think that their previously quiet neighborhood has suddenly turned into a war zone. They run into the street panicking and get hit by cars, they chew through dog crates, they chase and often bite fireworks, they run full speed into closed glass doors, and they escape yard boundaries and meet up with other panicking animals and get in fights. For the people of the USA, it’s a great day for celebrating independence from England for animals on the other hand it is a terrifying, horrific bonanza of unexpected and unpredictable loud noise and light. Fortunately as humans with a supposed larger forebrain we can understand what is happening whereas animals cannot.

This brings me back to my point which is whether in business or personal life panicking won’t help. The wolf lurking at the door is just fear disguised as a scruffy dog, he can’t really hurt you. Panicking on the other hand can suspend your ability to save your business or a life. Next time panic sets in, remind yourself it can’t help you and go to solution. As Ivar Hagland would say “remain calm, cool, and collect”.

Google Trends

Another new fangled thing from Google, those guys must never sleep. Google Trends provides insights into broad search patterns on the internet. The search pattern change moment by moment. Now I will tell you the most visits to my blog so far has been 115 views. So the theory should be that if I include the “on fire” search words in my blog and on my tags my stats will go up dramatically. So as those at Google classes say “test that”. So what I am going to do is just that, below I am going to include the hot search words of the day and see if my views increase dramatically. It might be better to test this in the AM as it  is 7:42PM where I am USA time maybe we will have to do a morning and evening test. So here goes:

 

1. calorie restriction diet plan 2. telemicro canal 5 santo domingo 3. chuck jones 4. ann compton 5. resveratrol supplements 6. presidential news conference 7. david murdock 8. cindy crawford shaving cream 9. obama press conference 10. ed henry 11. cap and trade 12. telemicro internacional 13. obama speech march 24 14. infrared sauna 15. love who you love lyrics 16. resveratrol side effects 17. american idol march 24 18. conjunto atardecer 19. steve dalkowski 20. stephen strasburg 21. roll bounce 22. carl dean 23. bleach episode 212 24. kevin chappell 25. jesse jackson jr

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