TechEd 99 - Conference bags

Bags of conference

You’ve got it. You had to queue to register and queue again to collect it, but now it is finally yours – the Conference Bag. Forget the PowerPoint printouts: those will only sit on a shelf for a year and then be surreptitiously binned to make way for another set. Forget the content – it will be superseded even more rapidly by some new paradigm or other. No, alone amongst the goodies from the conference, the Conference Bag (CB) is King. It comes, of course, with handling rules.

Rule 1 (there is only one rule) – never, ever use your bag at the conference for which it was issued – tacky, tacky, tacky.

To do so is to miss completely the point of a CB. The CB is no longer a container for objects. Instead it is a status symbol. Being seen with it proves that you have been to an important, expensive conference. So what purpose is served by carrying it at the issuing conference? None. Everyone at that conference can already see that you are attending!
The clue to the real purpose of the bag is to be found in the lettering on the outside. Your CB says ‘Microsoft TechEd 99’ so that people at future conferences will know that you were at TechEd in 1999. Since they will be seeing you at another expensive conference, the TechEd 99 CB means that you rate at least two important conferences. Which brings us to temporal considerations.

Cool bags

How long does a bag remain cool? This years’ model is naturally cool, so your TechEd bag will last for about six months, but please don’t be seen with it after that: a 99 bag is not Y2K compliant. So, as a general rule, last year’s bag is as acceptable as last year’s fish.
      The only exception is if the bag is from the same conference, so last year’s TechEd bag is very cool at this year’s TechEd because it implies that you are a regular. But please don’t make the depressingly obvious error that I saw on the bus coming in from the airport. A guy, looking cool, beard and sandals, working away at a WinCE device, TechEd 98 bag slung nonchalantly over one shoulder. All the signals were correct except the state of the bag: it was pristine.
      Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. Now think: what does that say? It says "I have so little clout in my organisation that I can only wangle one conference a year!" Even if it’s true, you can simply use the CB as a tool bag for six months to give it that lived-in look. Old airport handling labels are also an acceptable ploy: they can even be cut and pasted from holiday luggage and everyone will be trying to work out which conference was held in Marbella.
      So conference bags, like cars, fall into the doldrums as they age, but can ultimately undergo a revival as they acquire classic status. A CCB (Classic CB) implies that you’re smart enough to have been wangling your way to conferences for years. It tells people in no uncertain terms that you are a person to be reckoned with (or, that you are sad enough to buy bags in junk shops).
      As an example of the genre, I have with me on this trip a bag from the Third Annual Borland Database Conference. The words on the side are perfect CCB material giving:

the location (Palm Desert, California)

the product list (dBASE, Interbase and Paradox)

but – crucially - not the date so it leaves people wondering.

This bag also happens to be, for students of CB function and form, a beautiful illustration of the evolution of DNA (Designer Knapsack Architecture) Yes, I know that Knapsack doesn’t begin with a N, but then neither does Internet…

Genetic algorithms
Way back in the early days of conferences, the CB was indeed a device for wrapping around other objects. The earliest bags were, like early forms of life, uni-cellular; as the Borland bag demonstrates, it is simply a canvas sack with one zip at the top - no pockets, no internal dividers.
      Had the main evolutionary pressure remained the same, then the CB would probably have remained in this early form. However, an entirely new evolutionary pressure arose once the CB became a status symbol. Each conference organiser was required to present attendees with a more impressive bag. How do you make a bag more impressive? You increase its complexity by adding zips, pockets, straps, zip pockets to hold the straps, dividers, pouches, card holders, pen clips, and so on and on and on. In the process, of course, you develop the multi-cellular bag that we see today.
      Of course these developments drastically reduced the efficiency of the CB to perform its original role - namely to provide storage for objects. Or, to be more precise, storage was fine but retrieval was seriously impaired - as anyone who has ever put a passport into a modern conference bag can testify.
      Presumably, unless something interrupts this process, the CB will eventually disappear entirely and delegates will simply be issued with a very impressive collection of zips, tabs, tags and fasteners. They will, inevitably need to be issued with a simple, sack like device in which to keep this collection…

And finally...
If this is your first conference you must, perforce, use your TechEd 99 CB. While this implacably marks you as a newbie, at least you can look forward to using it with pride at your next conference. And at that one you will, for the first time, be able to wear your TechEd 99 T-shirt.
What!? You’re wearing it here!!!????

Mark Whitehorn

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Dinner's ready...

Left: TechEd conference bags 1998 and 1999, as modelled by Rebecca Scott of ComponentSource