OT: I've just become Joerg-asmed ;-)

I haven't seen that. Of course, real customers get priority, but there's lots of dead time and boredom manning a booth, and it's normal for people to like to talk.

I tell them up-front that I'd like to sell to them, and hardly anybody minds. Most are helpful. After all, we want to improve their products.

Lots of them try to sell to other exhibitors, too!

--

John Larkin                  Highland Technology Inc 
www.highlandtechnology.com   jlarkin at highlandtechnology dot com    

Precision electronic instrumentation 
Picosecond-resolution Digital Delay and Pulse generators 
Custom timing and laser controllers 
Photonics and fiberoptic TTL data links 
VME  analog, thermocouple, LVDT, synchro, tachometer 
Multichannel arbitrary waveform generators

Cold calling is tough. Not a lot of responses so it is very discouraging. But it is like fishing. You have to go fishing to catch fish.

Dan

At the last Photonics West at Moscone, the goon level was very low. We unofficially shared a booth (we had about 8 square feet of it, end of one table) and we carried in our own gear in and set it up ourselves. No problems at all. In past years, SF was awful, but something must have happened to make things better.

10 years ago, you couldn't carry anything, couldn't plug anything in, couldn't have an extension cord anywhere. The union electricians walked around posting ELECTRICAL VIOLATION notices on about half of the booths. Seems that somebody came to their senses.

--

John Larkin                  Highland Technology Inc 
www.highlandtechnology.com   jlarkin at highlandtechnology dot com    

Precision electronic instrumentation 
Picosecond-resolution Digital Delay and Pulse generators 
Custom timing and laser controllers 
Photonics and fiberoptic TTL data links 
VME  analog, thermocouple, LVDT, synchro, tachometer 
Multichannel arbitrary waveform generators

There's more stuff going on than just the address. I keep my wife's identity strictly private, and the CV contains enough information to make her tolerably easy to identify.

Which didn't stop Jim from gloating - here - when he came across my previous address in the Netherlands, that he now knew where to send the hit-man. He's probably forgotten, but it did grab my attention.

A typo. Since Jim deliberately fails to spell my name right, he's got no excuse for complaining.

[snipped anal fixation]

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

y t

ally

In the UK we used to call them "wiremen" - my employers in the UK used to u se them a lot, sometimes to make up my prototype boards, and they varied a lot. Making the board I want made will take a few weeks, and I'm not going to pay anybody else to do it.

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The one time I managed to rescue a wireman from undesired early retirement, I had to find a contract design crew who were prepared to take him on as a n employee and rent him out to us as a sub-contractor. The wireman was a ve ry bright guy, but scared silly of the tax and national insurance rules, wh ich I was also having to cope with at the time - I would have done his pape rwork too if he'd been prepared to accept that kind of help, but was much h appier to become an employee of the little company that I'd dealt with a fe w years earlier.

A popular right-wing myth, but academic research suggests that almost all w elfare recipients are desperate to get a proper job, and will jump through all kinds of hoops to do it. For my wireman, mastering the British self-emp loyment rules was a hoop too far, but he was desperately grateful for the - fairly minor - effort I'd put in to get him around that.

.

Under-the-table schemes can be very expensive if you get caught.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

Not really. The dealers sell everything from small garden tractors all the way the up the line, and trade-ins. They are not your 200HP behemoths that will disc a 50ft swath at a time. Mostly ranch tractors. Not much actual farming around here other than grass for hay.

If you really want that new tractor smell, several times a year there will be sales on 45hp range with loader, box blade, mower and sometimes a tandem axle trailer for around 25K. Your basic work the ranch tractor.

Up the way there is a weird little Belarus for sale. 36hp air cooled diesel. Mower, post hole digger, box blade and a trailer.

7K for the lot. I'm tempted because it's such a odd damn tractor. Has a cab, be good for mowing.

--
Chisolm 
Republic of Texas

That's a $40K Kubota. John Deere would be only slightly cheaper. We are talking diesel.

I wouldn't touch it.

Hurray! Hopefully they're all going that way.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

--
"it's the network..."                          "The Journey is the reward" 
speff@interlog.com             Info for manufacturers: http://www.trexon.com 
Embedded software/hardware/analog  Info for designers:  http://www.speff.com

Any comments from outside North America on how that would translate to overseas trade shows?

I've found Americans the most willing to talk and share information.. Europeans and Asians (of course there is a range) generally seem to want to know a lot more about you and your affiliations before opening up even a bit. Sometimes they won't even tell you much about their own products and companies without that. Introductions and meaningful pre-arranged connections always help.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

--
"it's the network..."                          "The Journey is the reward" 
speff@interlog.com             Info for manufacturers: http://www.trexon.com 
Embedded software/hardware/analog  Info for designers:  http://www.speff.com

If you mean Malcolm Turnbull, they rejected him because he was... unpleasant to work with. He's sweet and reasonable to the camera, but pretty foul-mouthed and forceful in private. All of which would be good qualities, but he's not liked or trusted by other MPs. Despite being clearly best fit for leader.

I've had no problem doing this in some exhibitions in Finland or Germany. I always a few simple rules (in order)

1. Only aim at very clear win-win situations
2. Prefer the empty bored booths - activity seems to lure in more people
3. If other people arrive, always give way to the buying customer

--
Mikko

him as > > party leader a few years ago.

A Liberal Clive Rudd then (for non-Australians, the previous - Labour - pri me minister, who got slung out by his party a few years ago and replaced by a woman - Julia Gillard - who was almost certainly a much better party lea der, and prime minister, but definitely less attractive to the electorate, which got him back into power just before the recent elections.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney

[...]

My experience tell me otherwise, No for all of them, of course, but a large number have said that in my face "Why should I look for a job if I get all this money for nothing?". It was the core reason why I left the Netherlands. There is has gotten better, here it has gotten worse. It's not myth, it's fact.

He can't be the only one. Then maybe the UK should clue up about it and make those rules simpler.

Sure, and they should be. I simply will not do it.

--
Regards, Joerg 

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

A lot of people who collect public assistance do in fact have jobs, off the books.

--

John Larkin                  Highland Technology Inc 
www.highlandtechnology.com   jlarkin at highlandtechnology dot com    

Precision electronic instrumentation 
Picosecond-resolution Digital Delay and Pulse generators 
Custom timing and laser controllers 
Photonics and fiberoptic TTL data links 
VME  analog, thermocouple, LVDT, synchro, tachometer 
Multichannel arbitrary waveform generators

Yes, they call it "working the system". What drives me up the wall (but of course as a Christian shouldn't ...) is this: We both volunteer. It has happened that we drove elderly folks to medical appointments or to the pharmacy because the adult kids on welfare (living there as well) allegedly didn't have gas money. Where it later turned out that they had enough gas money to drive the same kind of distance to a store after they ran out of cigarettes.

--
Regards, Joerg 

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

That's your anecdotal evidence from the people you talked to about it - one may suspect with an advice-giving attitude.

The academics would have been more careful to assess a properly representative group, and would have taken the usual precautions to prevent the question from signalling the desired response.

It's a myth.

They looked pretty simple to me. Some people really hate dealing with bureaucracy, but the alternative - essentially unrestrained cheating and fraud - is worse. Only about 5% cheat and defraud, but they can do a lot of damage.

My attitude too, and that of about 95% of the population. The other 5% have to be given persuasive reasons to behave properly.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney

Yeah, when there are no arguments left it's brushed off as "anecdotal". Our health care industry knows it's all but. Canadians coming here is serious business.

Academic don't know much about this stuff. Only the numbers count and it's a lot.

46,159 people is anecdotal? Yeah, right. And that's only the registered number, there's a lot more who simply pay cash.

Wrong.

That number is much higher in the areas of home imporvement and handymen in most high-tax countries. It's the quiet Laffer curve.

You'd be very wrong with your 95%. I remember it from my time in the Netherlands where people who had houses said "It's xxxxx Guilders but without an invoice it's only xxxx Guilders". They said it in an intonation as if saying that one would be stupid not to.

--
Regards, Joerg 

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

Small scale? In the Netherlands during my college days people had whole big house remodel projects done that way. Over there the under-the-table economy even today is said to have a share of a whopping 9.5% of the whole inland economy, or 57 billion Euros (billion as in the American language):

They say it's even worse in other EU countries and that in European hotels and restaurants 19% of the business volume is kept under the table.

--
Regards, Joerg 

http://www.analogconsultants.com/