With the economy in a general nose dive, I figured that we could talk about something fun today. At every trade show, conference, and event with more than one vendor competing for your attention, there is bound to be “swag” – giveaways of small objects designed to be taken home and enjoyed with friends and family who will ooh and aah over the corporate logo printed thereupon.

Every industry has swag, but the tech industry tends to be very well represented, if only because geeks like toys and t-shirts. (Our “network rockstar” T-shirt did particularly well).

But how much swag is really out there? Just as a little experiment, I was wondering if you could do me a favor and gather up all the swag you’ve received over the years – all the t-shirts, funny glasses, USB drives, etc., take a picture of the pile, and send it to brian.boyko@netqos.com. I’d like to post some pictures online – especially if you’ve got an interesting story to tell about the swag.

For example, perhaps you met your spouse because of swag. Or you managed to use swag, duct tape, and a swiss army knife to defuse a bomb… who knows. Point is, I’d love to hear from you and figure out exactly what’s out there, swag wise.

So, how does this tie into network performance? It doesn’t.

What?

I can’t have other interests in the general tech industry? I’ve got to turn everything into a metaphor for the importance of measuring latency and jitter, or lowering the mean time to repair when something goes wrong? I’m a human being, not some sort of… network performance machine.

Although if you are interested in a network performance machine, check out our fine offerings at NetQoS! We’re giving away free t-shirts with each qualified demo.

Slideshow behind the cut.