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{0.1} WHO NEEDS THIS BOOK?
You need this book if you travel on business in the United States and Canada
as a technical expert, or if you are a sales person or other representative
for a small company and must function as your own technical expert.
You need this book if you have ever been faced with a demo on your laptop
and a projector in some other company's conference room that wouldn't work
with it.
You need this book if you've ever had a sales prospect tell you, "We have
to make a decision in three weeks or we lose our money."
You need this book if you've ever run a long phone cord down the hall to
the nearest FAX machine and hijacked its phone line so you could dial out
to the Internet from a conference room — or, if that's too old school
for you, if you've ever pirated a WiFi signal from a business next door
to a client site to get a demo working.
You need this book if you've ever spilled a latte on the carpet of your
company's brand new, beautiful trade show booth.
You need this book if you've ever missed the last exit to Cambridge
and ended up on the causeway to Revere, or gotten off a freeway
"temporarily" in Oakland and discovered there was no corresponding
onramp, or gotten stuck in a severe traffic jam on the Hollywood
Freeway and then seen a "Haz Mat" vehicle passing on the right shoulder,
or been caught in a torrential downpour trying to get to your car at the
Orlando Convention Center, only to be unable to tell your rented red
Cadillac from all the other rented red Cadillacs.
Whether they call you a Systems Analyst, Systems Engineer, Sales
Engineer, Customer Engineer, Consulting Engineer, Consultant, Chief
Architect, Chief Scientist, Vice President of Software Development,
or the owner of the business, you need this book if it's ever been
your job to show up somewhere and make something work.
{0.2} WHY THIS BOOK
Recently I was talking with my friend Wayne about his latest business
venture, a web site that allows people to collaborate from all over the
Internet with easy markup and annotation of advertising copy and other
graphics. He was describing a sales opportunity he and his partners
were chasing, and how it seemed to be going really well with the people
at the prospect company, until suddenly nobody would return their calls.
"You've entered the freeze-out period," I offered, "so you're really
close."
I went on to explain that this was a natural part of any sales cycle
involving a group of people selecting a technological solution. When
they are really serious about making a decision, the stop returning
the vendor's calls.
"Boy," Wayne commented, "You really have a lot of experience with this
stuff."
That's when I realized it was time to write this book. I have over
twenty years of experience as a "traveling techie," and it's time to
share what I've gleaned.
(A complete record of the "journey thus far" can be found in Appendix C.)
{0.3} HOW TO USE THIS BOOK
Visit the Traveling Techie web site
travelingtechie.com [LINK_0-1]
to get book excerpts, updates, user feedback, and local information.
(Where do you buy a monitor cable near the Las Vegas Convention Center?)
At some point in the future a complete electronic copy of this book may be
posted there as well.
While reading the paper copy, you can use the link numbers to
refer to Appendix A to get the full web addresses for all external
links. For example, the traveling techie web site is link number 0-1.
In Appendix A you will find a table entitled "All links in order
first listed in the book (link number order)" with this entry:
Some links refer to a 10-digit International Standard Book Number (ISBN),
or else to an Amazon Standard Identification Number (ASIN). You can type
these directly in to Amazon's search bar.
A copy of Appendix A with live links is on our web site as well, and we endeavor
to keep the links there up to date.
Disclosure:
For all links to Amazon.com on our web site, they pay us a small commission
if you buy anything during your shopping session; this never increases your
cost and it helps us to fund keeping the links updated.
link number medium author/artist/director title year link
0-1 web site Traveling Techie travelingtechie.com
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