We sit in the dome, sometimes just hanging around, sometimes so busy we don't know who to turn to. Dixit is always a winner: you'll spot from afar the plethora of colorful cards on our stand, which visitors can choose from instead of replicas. It is slowly becoming our trademark.
We arrived at the museum at 8:30, trying to get through the cable tangle before the visitors came. No extension cord, we can fix that; bring it with your router. I pull the cable out of the router in one motion and plug it back in randomly. No wifi. The IT guy comes; sorry for the inconvenience, someone messed with the router, the cable was plugged in the wrong place. Thank you very much, now the internet is up.
And off we go to enjoy the most significant benefit of conferences, free coffee. There's no one behind the coffee machine, but that fact alone doesn't put Andi off. She walks behind the counter, silences the buttons, inserts two cups, presses the switch: a sign appears on display, but the coffee won't spill.
We met Sándor Erdei, the heir to the renowned cartoonist's legacy. Then a lovely lady from the Transport Museum, who was so enthusiastic about one of their exhibitions, decided to organize a visit to the museum in the company. And a guy who just wanted to charge his laptop at our stand.
Our customers have found us too. Some boast about their reference project; some report a mistake and talk over a joint performance plan: old and new faces, nostalgia, and promising project opportunities.
Running out of business cards, it turns out that Andi's card has David's email address on it, never minds, two in one.
At lunch, all is quiet. The gentleman at the following table asks me to watch their stall while he goes to lunch. "If someone could load up their laptops, projectors, take a photo!" I will, I assure him helpfully, even though I don't have a smartphone, but the intention is the thing.
The others greeted me that there was vegan food, yay! Of course, by the time I get there, it's gone, no problem, there are two desserts.
After lunch, the crowd gathers again. I show a librarian the Ludwig Museum's artifact finder, and he is impressed by the variety of filtering criteria - period, creator, nationality, wow, so many possibilities! I click on the search button, nothing happens. I quickly switched to another project; fortunately, the MNM kiosk does its job nicely. Of course, the MNM colleagues do most of the pushing.
We listen in on the presentations, some that don't tie us down too much, but there are some quite fascinating topics: one speaker presents inspirational design through a case study. It's also interesting to listen to the Ludwig connoisseur: where a significant part of the museum collection is already digital, the challenge is not the process of digitization. It's how and on what medium to preserve media artworks for posterity so that they remain manageable despite the constant advances in technology.
Women's under-representation in the IT sector is an important issue. Still, it is not topical in our company: we have to queue more and more often for the ladies' room, and I thought that this threat would never arise in an IT company.
Two days go by like a blink of an eye. It's as tiring as programming, but it's still wholly relaxing. It is instructive to learn about the work and problems of the museum sector, to see ourselves through the eyes of our partners. I come from a competitive background, yet somehow I feel at home. We have in common that culture is an asset that needs to be preserved, nurtured, and disseminated. We hope to continue to have the opportunity to work together on this.
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