The Code Bag O’ Swag
Seems like old times
Once upon a time, when I was an honest-to-goodness professional journalist, I started a blog for Barron’s called Tech Trader Daily. One of the very first things I covered for the blog was the fourth annual edition of the All Things D conference, in May 2006. To kick off coverage of the event, I did a post called “The D Bag o’ Schwag,” which inventoried the contents of the giant bag of goodies handled out to attendees. I repeated the exercise annually over the next few years, even after I moved my blog over to Forbes.
Alas, ATD and the D conference are dead, after Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg broke off their long-standing relationship with the Wall Street Journal and set off on their own, creating a new website called ReCode — and a new high end tech conference called Code.
It’s a new company, and a new conference, but one which I think is going to feel a lot like the old one. Code is taking place in the same location — the Terranea in Rancho Palos Verdes, California — and the same week — right after Memorial Day — as the last few ATD conferences. And it will no doubt have the same high quality attendees, to hear interviews with the likes of Sergey Brin, Jimmy Iovine, Dick Costollo, Reed Hastings, Satya Nadella, Masayoshi Son and other tech bigs.
I’m a retired blogger, having moved into full-time flackdom with Brunswick Group. But for old times sake, I couldn’t resist reviving an old tradition. So here it is: the inventory list of the first ever Code Bag O’ Swag.
Take a seat, this is going to be a long list.
—A comfy black Code Conference jacket, from a company called Port Authority. Size L. (Hey, I need to lose a few pounds.)
—To hold the booty, a black canvas gym bag, complete with Re/Code events logo, made by a company called Elleven. Or maybe, E//Even.
—A t-shirt that says “Harvey Mudd is on a mission.” Size L. The school Harvey Mudd, I think they mean. Wrapped around it, a wrist band that says “The World Needs Harvey Mudd.”
—In a cubicle box, a heath tracker/watch thingy from Basis.
—An Intel Gallileo kit. I had to look that one up. “The Intel Galileo board is a microcontroller board based on the Intel Quark SoC X1000 application processor, a 32-bit Intel Pentium brand system on a chip (SoC). It is the first board based on Intel architecture designed to be hardware and software pin-compatible with shields designed for the Arduino Uno R3.” I’m sure it will prove incredibly handy.
—A large t-shirt for something called Digi Tour. Had to look that one up as well.
—A Roku streaming stick, HDMI version.
—Various odds and ends. Stickers from CODE and Live Safe. A card from Roku extolling the virtues of the aforementioned streaming stick. A card with a URL for the Janrain Customer Profile Management system. A PayPal logo card holder; it sticks to the back of your mobile phone to hold business cards. From DocuSign, a “limited edition Income Rafiki Friend Chain,” made by a Maasai Mama in Kenya, with proceeds targeted at providing financial tools to empower women. A weird looking…I dunno….tablet holder, maybe? From a comapny called Techtrap. (It has straps that were holding together the various bits noted above.)
—A blank notebook with a yellow cover from Qualcomm.
—A copy of the book “Thinking in New Boxes: Five Essential Steps to Spark the Next Big Idea,” by Luc de Brabandere and Alan Ivy of Boston Consulting Group.
—A NASDAQ OMX-logo pouch — think pencil holder or costmetics bag — whic contains a portable charger for mobile devices, and an envelope complete with wax seal offering $1,000 off if you switch to solar energy from Solar City — NASDAQ SCTY.
—Two mini LP records — well not real records, I think they’re basically coaster — from Sonos. But wait, more to come from Sonos.
—A conference program book.
—A BlackBerry logo pen.
I lugged all this stuff up to the room…where I found ANOTHER BAG.
This time I found:
—A Google 16 GB Nexus 7 tablet, made by Asus….which you are supposed to use for the accompanying set of Sonos Play 1 speakers. (Update: The tablet and speakers are actually set up in the room, which I hadn’t originally noticed; the system is set up to play an album by the jazz musician Robert Glasper, who apparently is playing at the conference later tonight.)
Oh my.
Update: In the wee hours, upon returning to my room I found a box from Comcast. Inside, a collection of Comcast candy bars — one with a picture of Jimmy Fallon, one with the smiling visage of Seth Meyers, and a third with the Comcast Universal logo. Also a Powershot II power stick. (That makes two of those, counting the one I got earlier from Nasdaq.) Also got an offer to upgrade my Comcast cable boxes to the Xfinity X1 platform.
