Pitching in an Elevator

Curry was up to scratch last night, definitely the best I’ve eaten in the US, but I spent most of my time at the event with a microphone in my hand and a cameraman with a big, professional-looking shoulder-cam right beside me while I interviewed customers and partners about the conference. If they weren’t just being polite, I’d say the consensus is it’s the best EnZee Universe yet. It’s certainly the biggest.

As well as the interviewing I did last evening, we’ve had a number of people wandering around the conference with flip video cameras in their hands. I’m one of them so I have been trying to do it justice by recording clips in the talks I have been at and sound-bites from Netezza technologists. Today I have been following up the exercise i kicked off yesterday. I toured the sponsor stands in the partner pavilion asking them if they would record a 30 second elevator pitch to camera – to go on the community web-site and to show at the conference. I offered a prize for the best one and I said I’d be back today to record them. So this morning i have been discovering just how wide a range of reactions a little hand-held video camera can have on folks.

Basically my modus operandi was to walk onto the stand just say “I’d like to shoot a 30 second elevator pitch to camera for our conference website, do you want to do it now, or shall i come back later?” Only one person said ”Ok, let’s go”, plenty of people said “Can you give me  a few minutes to think what I want to say?” several said “We need to get so-and-so, she/he is the best person to do it”. All of which struck me as pretty reasonable reactions. And i predicted the “let’s go” guy just by his appearance – a frustrated actor in a marketing job i suspect (and no, it wasn’t my alter ego, though maybe it could have been).

One guy on a small booth did turn me down. He said his CEO had left the conference early and he was a techie who didn’t feel confident to do the pitch. Well fair enough, but what really surprised me was the reaction on one of the bigger stands. They delayed while they conferred with the other staff they had at the conference, but in the end they said thanks but no thanks. It just shows that people who can be great one-on-one don’t all have the thespian gene when it comes to one of those scary little lenses.

Off to capture some more mischievous footage and to some more serious meetings.  I need more time, which i don’t have right now, to write up some of the surprising things i learned in the keynotes on Monday and a panel on analytics this morning. That should be coming this evening or tomorrow!