Springfield

This is my first "blog" writing from on the road. It has been a nutty couple of days I will tell you that.

So I drove up on Monday to play golf with Mike Swartow who is a good client from Boston. He is a good client but not a good golfer and I played pretty well. I have been not using my driver as much lately to keep the ball in play more, especially on new courses so that helped. Anyway after golf, we decided to go the hotel and have dinner at the Champions Sports Bar and watch the football. Let me tell you driving for 3 hours, a round of golf in the sun, and a football double header with Mike Swartow led to way too many beers. They had a bunch of those New England microbrews at the bar and we tried em all. I was one hurtin pup on Tuesday morning at the convention.

This is the first convention I have been to with Grant Hunt and he is not really the same as Jerry Rogers used to be. Grant really wants us to stay at the booth and is giving the real corporate schtick. He is not a sales guy so it is different. There were some of our clients there and Grant was good with those guys in saying Hi and making sure that the back end issues were up to par but when propects came that is when I stepped in. I sometimes think the best relationships at these events are not made in the booth but more when you are just walking around and stuff like that. Grant did not like being at the booth without me so I had to stand there from 8-4 with only two little breaks. Swartow did not even hit the floor till like 11 and I think he left at 2.

We had a dinner planned that night with Matt Parker who is from Boston. He has a pretty big distribution network up here and he would be a great client. I know he has done some buying from George Macredes who is from my town and is in my dart league. The company Macredes works for does not have as quality product as we do so I was hoping we could have a shot. We went to a pretty nice steakhouse that was across from the Marriott and the Convention Center. They had a great cajun rib eye and some of the same beers that the Champions had.

During dinners like that I prefer to talk more about other things than work- Sports, Movies stuff like that but Grant Hunt kept bringing it back to work stuff. All in all it was OK. Going back to the hotel we had to walk by Champions and it was packed with all the people from the Convention. Swartow was there. Macredes was there and a bunch of other people I know. Grant and Matt Parker did not want to go in but I felt it was a good networking thing so I stopped in. I knew I could not do it up like the night before but I still had a good time.

It was a bit weird because I was talking to Macredes about darts and some stuff back home and Swartow came up. I like Macredes and Swartow is a good guy but also a client. I didn't really want to introduce them but I had to. I only stayed till about 11 and they were both going strong when I left.

Well I gotta hit the the booth and catch up with Hunt. More later