This past weekend, I had the amazing opportunity to travel to the breathtaking city of Rome.  Although I could write pages and pages on how much I absolutely loved this beautiful city, from the historical sites to the delicious food, this blog will focus on my internship and professional experiences (returning to work this week was definitely a struggle after this fabulous getaway).

Even though I actually worked at an IT company last summer in their sales department, working at Derdack, I am learning something new everyday about this fast-paced industry.  Working specifically in event marketing has also shown me another side of an IT company.  This weekend, I am actually going to have the opportunity to go to my first tech expo with my supervisor.  We will be attending Gartner IT IOM Summit in Berlin, which will bring together some the tech industry’s top leaders.  This week I have witnessed first-hand how much preparation goes into attending an event like this.  At the same time, this preparation means that I have been given some pretty tedious and menial tasks to complete, from proofreading my supervisor’s English for our flyers and brochures to loading content onto 550 USB disks that will be given to prospective customers.

My main task at the expo will be to gather primary research on swags and promotions that other companies are giving away so that I can come up with valuable suggestions for new items that Derdack can give out at their next event.  Until this internship, I had no idea just how important giveaways are to securing customers.  Giving out the right items can drive foot traffic to your booth and entice people to learn more about your company and your product.  This is especially important for Derdack as their product, a mobile incident and remediation app, takes some explaining for customers to understand how it works and why it is useful.  Customers’ preference for new, creative swag items is indicative of this industry, as a whole.   The tech industry is fast-growing and ever-changing.  People are always demanding more and their preferences are always changing.  Although attending this expo means that I have to work on a Sunday, I am definitely excited to see first-hand how an event such as this works!

Bis Später!

Lindsey