But when Telecom happens, the city is transformed into a beehive of activity. Every one of the world’s major telecommunications and computer companies sets up a huge exhibition at the convention center. These multimillion-dollar exhibits stay up for just a week, but are planned out years in advance. In the aggregate, almost a billion dollars is spent on this week-long extravagance. Major firms time their research and roll out new products to coincide with the exhibition. Exhibition space is sold out three years in advance. Over a hundred thousand visitors show up for Telecom and hotel rooms are sold out for a radius of seven miles, with visitors being whisked in on high-speed trains. In the exhibit areas, extravagant gifts are given away to potential clients, and multimedia extravaganzas of Hollywood proportions are staged in the pavilions of the large companies.

It was to this exhibition that Marc Knoller (the only other person still working with me on the callback business) and I arrived with our homemade four-foot folding exhibition booth in a suitcase to push the product we no longer believed would transform the industry. On the Swissair flight, we discussed which publications he would be in charge of when we gave up the phone company upon our return. We were pretty well resigned to defeat, but the excitement of the trip and the spirit of the exhibition soon had us revved up again for one more great try.

Then we saw our exhibit area. We were placed in the Telecom equivalent of Siberia, miles from the main exhibit area, with other small American companies. While thousands thronged to the indoor fireworks and bands at the IBM, AT&T, and Alcatel booths, or lined up to receive free cameras from Canon, only a few lost or intrepid souls wandered to our area of the exhibit floor. Action was called for, and I had an idea.

All visitors to the exhibition had to come in through the grand entranceway. Here each visitor received a copy of the show’s own daily newspaper, as they moved on to a set of escalators that whisked them to the main exhibit hall. In the main hall they were greeted by stunning models who were beautifully dressed in the national costumes of their home countries or the sharply fitting uniforms of their sponsor companies. These models handed each visitor literature encouraging them to visit the booths of the companies they were working for.

The impressive displays these large companies staged were actually more a sign of their vulnerability than of their technological superiority in the marketplace. While big executives of the “important” companies were staying at luxury hotels and partying into the night, Marc and I had managed to secure an austere, empty one-bedroom apartment that had been unexpectedly vacated. Unfortunately, the former tenant had flown the coop, stiffing not only the landlord, but the telephone, gas, and electric companies as well. Ironically, while we were attending this futurist telecom extravaganza, we were without basic phone service once we left our exhibit booth. Not only that, but we ate all our meals by candlelight, after we had heated them up on Sterno. No doubt there are romantic occasions when a candlelight dinner in Geneva might be wonderful, but this was decidedly not one of those times. After several nights of tuna fish and soup in a cup, Marc and I decided to go downtown to see how the other half lived.