Day 1

I woke up at 7:00. A whole hour after the time I wanted to wake up. My dad was already awake waiting for me to wake up. Once I woke up, I went to the bathroom, changed and got ready to go down for a quick breakfast then start work for the day.

I rushed down for breakfast. When I got there, I found out that some of them were still having breakfast and that they had woken up late. I got some food. Before I could go to the office, my dad came down for breakfast so I gave him some company while he was eating his food then I headed to the office afterwards the meeting to see what we were doing today.

I would be helping smart pitch which is 90 seconds for companies to show off their products to others. I was helping with the Audio visual (AV) desk team to make sure the videos that companies had played as they were not embedded in the powerpoint created for the smart pitch.

There was going to be a rehearsal before that to check that the system worked. Before lunch, I walked around looking at the different areas again to see that everything was okay. After I finished my walk around, I went to the office to do some work and start writing up the days before diaries report for the trip report.

I took some time on the report then I went for lunch. I had some time for lunch. Once I had finished lunch, I went to the conference/ballroom for the rehearsal of the ppt and the sound system. Halfway through our test, some companies came and asked us if they could do a test to perform so we let them practice till it was time for the actual show to begin.

15 mins before we started, the hall started to fill up so we stopped the rehersal so people could not get a sneak peak at what was about to happen. We started 15 mins late but we had a buffer anyway so we were ok. Once it started, A man named Ryan Mackey, one of the directors, walked onto the stage and began the event. We first kicked off with two keynotes which are presentations by different people.

This was the first keynote by a person from GFK intelligence and Nielsen IQ. Each keynote lasted around 20 mins. The person talked about trends in innovation and how it affected sales.

After the keynotes, we started with the smart pitch. There were 23 groups in total. They all had 90 seconds to present whatever they want: Presentation, demo or video. They just had to do it in 90 seconds. There were 4 categories and at the end of each category, everyone except vendors had to choose a winner to recieve a trophy with a photo taken with them holding it with Ryan. The whole thing including keynotes and smart pitch took around one and a half hours. Once the keynotes had finished, everyone left to do one-on-one meetings between vendors and channel partners.

During that time, me and my dad went to the big shopping mall nearby to uniqlo to pick up some formal clothing for the next couple of days. We spent a while there, then i got some things altered so during that time, we walked into lush to get some bath fizzies since I have since I have a bathtub so I could use it.

After that, we still had some time so we went to decathlon to get some swim shorts for my dad so on Friday we could go swimming. But the worker said the had a ‘100% membership program’ and my dad did not want to give them his email so we ditch getting the swim shorts. After that, we went back to uniqlo but we had to wait a few mins for it to be finished, once it was, we ran back to the car and drove back to the hotel.