Quick PPAI Vegas recap

It's my first day back in the office after being out for a week at the PPAI Expo in Vegas. I had hoped to have something a little more substantive for you today, but as I'm sure 99 percent of the people who traveled last week are, I'm playing the "Answer as many delinquent e-mails in eight hours as you can so you don't drown in a terrible, terrible pile of work" game. So, needless to say, I'm a little behind (and also losing the e-mail game), so I thought I'd just post a quick recap of my thoughts from the show and leave the fancy talkin' for next week. Said recap is going to go a little something like this:

• The education sessions I attended on Tuesday were awesome. I really enjoyed the three I attended, which you can read about starting right here, and will definitely be making a point to attend as many as I can in the future.

• I didn't get to walk the floor much since I was busy with meetings/thanking sources/locking up interviews for our Feb. issue, but from what I could see the show traffic and booth attendance seemed comparable to last year's. This is a total unofficial opinion, I have no numbers or facts to back this up with at all. I'm just estimating based on what I was able to observe on my own and what I heard from the handful of suppliers I spoke with.

• Touch screen technology is starting to pop up more. Hanes had a pretty slick mobile site they showed me on an iPhone and iPad at their booth, and I think SanMar had a big touch screen built into the wall of its booth where you could dress one of its models in different outfits.

• One of the booths was giving out free hamburgers? They had a whole grill and eating area set up and everything. Did anyone try them? Yay or nay?

• The most interesting stuff I saw was actually with a couple of the screenprinters and dyehouses I spoke with for the February T-shirt article I'm writing. I've been in the industry for a little while now, but I haven't spent much time studying apparel printing methods. It was cool to learn about stuff like color discharge, different kinds of washes, the chemistry of printing, etc. Check back on promomarketing.com in a month or so to see the story that (hopefully) explains everything I've learned, but possibly will just be another venue for me to flaunt my ignorance. Entertaining either way I suppose.

So that's my Vegas recap in brief. The brief of the brief would be something like, "Good: Education. New: Touch screens. Mysterious: Booth Hamburgers." The briefest would of course be "Things: Existing," which after today's e-mail battles, I'm seriously thinking about phasing into my work communications.

Until next week,
Mike

MIKE FACT OF THE WEEK: I am listening to rap music as I write this blog post. The song that's currently on my Pandora station is "Diamonds on the Inside" by Input.