Meeting and Greeting So Many Ideas at the Show

Awoke in the hotel early, thinking about the show. Got an early call from my manager Lizzy, talking of six inches of fresh snow, and more on the way. Time to close the cafe. oh well. Better than losing bucks all day, and when we heard the other guy, Jerry's closed, well that made it ok.

Sitting at the Javits in an almost empty hall, workers milling around, few exhibitors here yet. We are meeting with Matthew Link, who is helping out with the Travel writing seminar that Kent and I will run at 5 pm. Should be fun. We will run through the program and make sure we're all on the same page.

Yesterday's trade show day brought a mix....people with interesting ideas for affiliating with us and a few guys chasing that travel video vertical. In our business they call every category a vertical, and boy does video and travel jump out. I met two very different men who both wanted us to run their video shorts on our site, for no money. I am trying to make it a good thing for the users, but big embedded logos pointing at another site turns me off. Still, video is inevitable, so I'm sure that in 2008 most of our stories will have some sort of video accompaniment.

Today is open the public, so there will be many more takers for our airport parking coupons and our little flyers that tell our story. I am hoping to meet the new director of tourism for South Africa, we had a date yesterday but she didn't make it. You never know who we will meet here in the aisles of the NY Times Travel show!