Overheard on the Showfloor

"AFA stands for Another Fascinating Acronym. Every time you come to one of these stupid little acronyms, you have to figure out what it means."

—Jon Warshawsky, during the Corporate Event Marketing Assn. Summit 2007, (La Jolla, Calif., July 22–24)

"We don't have Internet access at the Technology Shoot Out."

—Sebastian Grady, COO of Altus Learning Systems, at beginning of his presentation at CEMA

"That was AllianceTech with their budget of $8 for that presentation."

—Emcee Lou Santini commenting on AllianceTech's Roger Lewis wearing a series of hats with handwritten notes during CEMA's Technology Shoot Out

"Isn't this how George Bush got elected?"

—Santini when CEMA attendees couldn't figure out how to use nTAG's interactive voting device

"In the old days, people would come to an event and get together and you knew good things were happening and revenue increased. But these days everyone wants to measure ROI."

—WingateWeb's Steve Sheffield at CEMA

"Oui ... moyen ... je ne crois pas." ("Yes ... so-so ... I don't think so.")

—Franck Benhamou, of exhibitor Emys Spa and Cosmetics at Cosmoprof North America, responding to the questions "Was this your first time exhibiting here?" "How's it going?" and "Will you come back?" (Las Vegas, July 15–17)