Well, yesterday was slower than we had hoped.  The layout of the exhibit hall is not conducive to drawing people into the exhibits.  Not much can be done now but live and learn for next year.

Last night we had a nice dinner at a small place not far from the hotel.  Good food and cold beer.  Always a winning combination.  The restaurant has a cat that when it want to leave the restaraunt, it goes to the second floor window above the outside seating area and jumps down into the road.  If you could see the way people drive here, you would realize that this cat must have far more than 9 lives.  Don’t get me wrong, the cat could easily get out of the front or side door of the restaurant, it simply chooses the window.

We did have a few interesting visitors to the booth, including a possible advertising opportunity in a series of very good journals.  We shall see how that progresses.

Hopefully, today will be better but at the very least, we were able to hand out some fliers and have people see our name which is what it is all about now.

Hold on, there was a customer siting in the next aisle.  Got to go see…

Getting ready for the first full day of EMBO 2009. Sunday mornings are quite the contrast here in Amsterdam. The chaotic symphony of bikes, motorcycles, cars and people fades to a quiet calm. Rather peaceful. I hope the show today contrasts that with swarms of folks looking for product.

<update 1:45 PM>

The show has been a bit slow this morning.  A few people with reasonable interest but not as many as we would have liked.  The Poster Sessions are this afternoon as well as lunch, both of which happen in the exhibit halls.  Hopefully that will help.  We’ll see.

On another note, it is clear that either the furniture here is not that well made or I put on too much weight this trip as I have now broken 2 of the 3 chairs in the booth by simply sitting on them.  I tried to blame it on poor quality construction.  Jeff doesn’t buy it.  In fact, he doesn’t think that the lunch staff should server me for my own good and the good of the rest of the furniture at the exhibition hall.  He’s probably right.

We are setup and ready to go. I’ll be providing regular updates during the show so stay tuned.

We visited the Anne Frank House today.  For those of you who don’t know, this is the actual house where Anne Frank hid with her family during the Nazi occupation of Amsterdam in WWII.   I was not prepared for the power of the exhibit.  In school, I learned all about Anne Frank and the atrocities that the Nazi’s committed during WWII but that always was learned and taught with a sense of detachment.    Here, we got to walk though the movable bookcase that hid the secret annex and see the actual diary that this courageous little girl wrote in with such amazing clarity and purpose.  Walking through the exhibit, walking though here room, seeing the images on her bedroom wall brought a sense of realism to it that I nor many of those in my generation had ever felt before.

I cannot help to think that if all of us could show the courage, determination and spirit that she showed in the face of the terror around her, we would all be much better for it.

Congrats to our parent company… of course, our goal is to overtake them.  Doesn’t all parents aspire for their children to do better than them?

89 North is proud to announce that we have joined the Lake Champlain Region Chamber of Commerce.

Our first formal advertisement, 2 months of placement in BioOptics World Online. And we’re off…

BioOptics World-Biotechnology & Biomedical Technology News & Resources.