So, have you ever done a trade show? They're very intense. By the time you've consulted with builders, made all the arrangements for shipping, air transport, hotel arrangements, demo preparation, and coordinated everything else - you're ready to relax at the show.

The show is no place to relax. It means you're scrambling amid the packed shipping crates, trying to figure out which to open first. Then, after the crew has helped you assemble the booth, and you've picked the last piece of lint off the carpet, you can look forward to several days of standing up for eight hours while you glad-hand your visitors.

I am so very glad I only had to design the booth. The real heroine of the trade show booth is Rhonda Warzecha - who handled all of the stuff in the first two paragraphs. Then she looked beautiful for three days at the show!

The motif shown in the right panel of this screen is the one that determined the look and feel of the show and our advertising for the year 2000. Without a lot of resources, we needed a big and bold statement that people would remember.

I'm hoping that it worked - or helped. (I wonder if anyone has ever bought an embedded development tools company because of its great graphics? Probably not, huh?)

We were purchased at the end of the year, though. For our DSP-based RTOS.