By Steve Flairty
NKyTribune columnist
Sauntering through the aisles of promotional booths at professional or educational conferences and picking up a few of those freebies, or “swag,” can be fun. In fact, it might change one’s mood after suffering through a dry presentation or two at the conference and make the ride home more upbeat.
Fresh on my mind is a recent conference on aging issues that Suzanne and I attended (and where the sessions were actually pretty good). I stopped at nearly every booth, enjoyed the chit-chat, and learned about possible resources that would benefit our journey into serious senior living, not that we are “unserious” now.
But I also kept my eye on a swag item often seen at such tables — ballpoint pens. I procured one at each table because I habitually use, and lose, those important tools a lot, including when they end up in the washer or dryer where clothes go to become ink stained.
That, plus my stock is often riddled with pens that won’t work and are ready to be pitched. Fortunately, I almost never have to buy one because of the promoters’ generosity and my due diligence.
On this day, I checked around the show room for a few other things, picking up some bite-size candies and a couple of chip clips (I don’t like stale potato chips). Some booth attendants encouraged me to fill out tickets for their drawings, so I did that, too.
It was a beneficial conference, for sure. Good information and nice swag made the five hours a worthwhile time investment. And then, I got a phone call a few days later saying I’d won a gift basket. While claiming the gift an hour away in Danville, Suzanne and I took a tour of a fairly new assisted living location, which was likely their hoped for product by offering such a gift.
We now have tucked securely in our memory banks a place we might stay someday—though hopefully not for a good while. It started with a swag search and a little luck in a drawing.
Suzanne looked back seventeen years and told me about her favorite item found at a conference promotional table, a hand-held, compact fan—still working — that looks like the front of a UPS plane with a LED message glowing the words, “What can Brown do for you?” Her “nicest” swag ever was a UV clean, portable electric sanitizer for cell phones, glasses, keys, etc. She’s also been lucky enough to win $25 gift cards and beautiful potted plants while being at a long line of professional conferences over her working years.
So how about YOU and your swag harvest? Or what about YOUR good luck in table drawings? I’d love to know your stories. Contact me at sflairty2001@yahoo.com and share!
An opportunity to share an historical presentation on the Northern Kentucky History Hour, part of a Behringer-Crawford Museum (BCM) outreach, brought me from Versailles to Covington on October 21st.
My topic, delivered by Zoom technology, was about the life of 1800s Transylvania University professor Constantine Rafinesque, known to have put a hoax on the school after he was fired in 1826. I developed the program after Mary Jane Calderon, the communications manager at the museum, read an earlier Kentucky by Heart column I wrote on Rafinesque and contacted me to be a guest presenter.
As I tend to be a bit tech aversive, I was served well by Mary Jane’s expertise regarding Zoom presentations, along with her overall ability to work the process with me. From what I can see, BCM has a gem of an ambassador for its programs with Mary Jane.
A video of the presentation “Constantine Rafinesque: Eccentricity, Botany, and a Curse” is available on Youtube.
It’s always exciting when the annual Kentucky Book Festival (KBF) arrives, masterfully presented at Joseph-Beth Booksellers, in Lexington. It’s a week of literary events, highlighted by the culminating program with authors selling and signing their books on Saturday, November 1, from 9:00 AM to 3 PM.
Though I’ll not be present selling books, I’ll be visiting and enjoying the literary atmosphere and hopefully meeting some of the authors whose books I’ve reviewed for Kentucky Monthly. It seems like I never leave the event without being invigorated, whether it’s by seeing old friends, meeting interesting new people, buying a book or two, and even being alerted to another possible Kentucky-centric story to share.
For lots more details on KBF, visit kybookfestival.org.