I apologize for not posting anything for the last two weeks but I was very busy (I mean, really busy). I was invited to participate as a vendor in the 2009 NADITA Conference last week in Las Vegas, and I had only a week to prepare for setting up a booth.

NADITA is the association for the IT departments of Caterpillar dealers. MAQSA, the CAT dealer for the north of Mexico, is a client of Intelectix, and we have developed a few solutions for them that could be helpful to other dealers. MAQSA’s CIO invited me to the conference with about two weeks in advance, but just one week before the departure date he informed me as a vendor I was required to set up a booth.

So the week before the conference I had to:

  • Design and print banners
  • Design and print brochures
  • Make more business cards
  • Make some pens for giving away
  • Create an English version of my website and update it with CAT dealer products
  • Create a PowerPoint presentation to show on my booth to visitors
  • Buy plane tickets, pay for the stand, make hotel reservations, and other trip arrangements
  • Sign up for the golf tournament

And all of last week I was in Vegas. This year the conference was about implementing an ERP solution in the dealerships. CAT dealers currently use a very old, terminal-style ERP provided by Caterpillar, who will stop supporting it in a couple of years. The presentations I could attend were interesting, but they were only a few. Sometimes vendors were not allowed in the presentation because it was only for CAT dealers, and other times I was doing preparations for my booth.

This was the first time I set up a booth in a trade show, so I learned quite a bit. I am planning on writing a whole post about this weekend.

The best part of the conference was the golf tournament. It was played during the last day in scramble format with teams of four. My teammates were David Young, Tad Wharram, and Alejandro Caro. We shot 58 (-13) and won by 7 strokes, which in a scramble tournament is a monumental difference. The prize: a nice Dell Mini 9 netbook for each of us. I already wanted to buy one of them, but getting it for free was better :)

The winning team: Tad, Alejandro, myself and David

The winning team: Tad, Alejandro, myself and David