Goin’ to Kansas City

Next stop on my fall speaking tour is Kansas City. Wednesday morning (the 25th) at 9:00AM I’ll be presenting the keynote speech for the ITEC conference at the Overland Park Convention Center. Perhaps “presenting” doesn’t give the right impression, because I’ll be telling how I hate parts of technology, why technology stinks, how we can deodorize IT, and telling jokes, lots of jokes. I even weave Beagle puppies and Gizmo the Gremlin into the speech, and poke fun at idiot vice presidents. This is certainly worth the price of admission (free to qualified business people). In Chicago, one of the vendors who understands how to work with small and medium businesses said he enjoys exhibiting at these shows because he can meet dozens of current and future customers in the time it takes to see three customers in a normal sales situation. Staying in touch with your customer base is always a good idea, and the right approach at shows makes that easier. Many large vendors partnered with local resellers, so potential customers met the actual sales and service company people that support their local area. I notice Kevin Tolly ranged a bit outside his normal beat to ask How Much Office is Enough? His discussion centered on Google Docs, their new service with a word processor and spreadsheet available as an online service. That fits well with my contention that at least 80 percent of Microsoft Word users really just need the free WordPad utility with spell check (Microsoft gives WordPad free in Windows, but without a spell check utility). In Chicago, I asked my audience how many people had, in the last month or two, created a Word document with multiple columns, headers, footers, or any other feature beyond the ability of WordPad. About 10 percent of the group raised their hands. Hmm.