sold souls and corporate backing

So I pretty much walked out of the exhibit halls loaded up on as much schwag as I could grab. Some notable treasures include, a travel mug from Nor-cal -very handy between sessions (it got beat out by the ceramic mug from aixtron that has a honeycomb structure on it). A Filipino style yoyo(it can sleep) that lights up from Park AFM. Retraction: the yoyo was in fact not invented as a weapon as many have been known to claim (myself included...). A ton of different pens (and matching pocket protectors...sigh.) A really cool writing pad from LLNL. Plus tons of delicious candy. Also as Joanna mentioned the fame of our post-doc at the Huntington display, which is really not so much schwag as an awesome memory. Yeah I know, I am a sucker for free stuff.

Comments

[Joanna]

I've been using my Nor-Cal canvas bag at the supermarket since I got it last year at MRS. So instead of "free swag", I prefer to think of it as "saving the planet".

[Tommy C.]

Its even better when they give you a schwag-bag to collect all the free schwag in! Double-whammy of generosity.

[C. Marin]

Hey Virat! Getting loaded up with free bags full of swag at conferences is a good thing, but often the stuff handed out is of low quality. It seems that the image these companies would get from giving out a few quality, smoking hot items would be preferable to them just handing out large quantities of swag.
See ya!

[Virat Mehta]

C. Marin, I know my post was a bit joking, but seriously I walked around a couple of times, and actually met some of the vendors we interact with, Charles Valenti for one, and the good guys at Huntington. But also the LLNL post and the Evans analytical post had some compelling and useful exhibits! Not all these guys had free stuff to hand out but I thought that it was fine. But I think this year, I felt like I actually saw a couple of exhibits with some really good (free)stuff, which is why I wanted to post about it (trying to encourage good free stuff over cheap free stuff). Plus I am obsessed with anything material science related, and a lot of these vendors, cater in large part to us!

[C. Marin]

Hi Virat.
I'm glad to hear that some of the vendors were kind enough to hand out quality stuff, and that you just have to weed out the good from the bad. It's cool that you got to meet some of the people that you've previously bought stuff from!