Exhibition Argentina Electronic Show 2006

(Chronicle of an October day in the year 2006) Today I went to the Argentina Electronic Show 2006 exhibition, which was being held at La Rural.

The admission fee was $15 pesos, which represents a significant sum—something I wouldn't have paid given the tenor of the exhibition and my own level of interest, despite liking IT. However, I had a bit of luck. An Argentine newspaper gave it a lot, an awful lot of publicity (or maybe the event paid for it, I don't know), which disappointed me because I didn't think it was that big after visiting the exhibition. But I suppose they had to sell it somehow, or maybe I was in a place where I felt lost and it just wasn't for me.

I had an invitation ticket—a free admission ticket I won in a raffle. I had submitted an entry to a photo contest organized by a newspaper, and of course I lost, but it seems they raffled off some tickets for the exhibition among the participants and luck was on my side. So one day I received an email notifying me of my status as a winner, and five days ago, I went to pick up the ticket for this Argentina Electronic Show 2006 event.

The exhibition lasts four days. Today, being a weekday, it opened at three in the afternoon and closed at nine at night; on the weekend, the opening time was extended to two in the afternoon.

So I planned to go at three-thirty, since at a quarter to four there was a talk, followed by another talk right after—one about Technology and the other about the Internet, if I remember correctly. Those were the talks I was interested in hearing, which is why I chose this day to visit.

When I arrived, it turned out there were two exhibitions. Looking straight ahead to the right, there was a Babies, Moms, and Maternity exhibition—at least it seemed to be about that—and right in front of us, we had the Argentina Electronic Show 2006 exhibition. The ticket counters were there; I passed right by them straight to the entrance area, pulled out my invitation ticket, and approached a guy who was talking to a police officer at what seemed to be the entrance.

He pointed out that it was the exit and that the entrance was right next to it, so I went over there, handed in my ticket, and they let me through.

Well, once inside, it wasn't that big of a deal. There were stands for well-known brands and others of not such a high level, two aisles by two aisles, and two places to grab a drink—completely empty—one of which turned out to be a truck decorated and set up as a bar.
I started walking along one of the edges, the left one, and took a general tour. Since it was small, I walked through the exhibition again, but more closely. I noticed that I was seeing many people carrying white bags and others with red bags—those cardboard bags usually given out when you buy clothes. In this case, they were all from Kodak and Kingston, two well-known brands. It turned out they were giving those bags out for free, so I ended up bringing two home with me as well.

A lot of people in suits and a few who looked like tourists; there were also people of a high socio-economic level, and I think the exhibition was mostly targeted at that sector—at least that was the impression I got (possibly IT investors)—as well as some people who wanted to appear to be from a high position.

Lots of promo models. Each stand had quite a few promo models—the smaller stands had no fewer than three each. Each stand had its own characteristic outfits; you could tell they had prepared on that front for a visual impact. Regarding IT and PCs—well, when it came to PCs, there was practically nothing. The Microsoft ones with transparent covers stood out, but only the ones they had connected for anyone who wanted to browse to use "something"—several PCs across various stands for browsing. There was a lot about music, which is outside my taste, and also a lot oriented toward gaming, something I no longer have an interest in for now. Generally, they mixed PC games with Home Theaters, which seems to be the current trend. 

For digital cameras and digital photography, I remember seeing the Kodak, Olympus, and Sonic stands.

I kept taking all the promotional flyers they handed out; after all, it's just everything stated on their respective websites, which are actually more complete, but I kept taking everything anyway. At the Kingston memory stand, there was a candy bowl with keychains, but when I went to get one, two girls took the last two. Something funny happened to me at the Olympus stand: there was a table with a pile of papers—more like six stacks of papers—and suddenly I saw someone walking by take one and leave, so I went to take one, and a young man who was attending to a query came over and told me those were for internal use. He asked me what I needed, and I told him to excuse me, that I was just taking papers, so I left it and kept looking.

That many stacked papers for internal use? Strange. A monitor caught my attention showing a movie on the front panel of an audio system—I had never seen anything like it.

Finally, I left. I must have been there for half an hour or a little bit more. I expected to stay longer; I also went with the idea of listening to two talks, imagining they would set up an auditorium for the presenters, but that didn't exist. Later, at one stand, I saw a person speaking with several people gathered around, so I imagined that was the first talk. Of course, I didn't stay, as the combination of music, noise, and the lack of a proper space made it almost impossible to listen attentively and comfortably.

In the last image, you can see promotional flyers from some brands and their products that I gathered during the tour.

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