College Fair - we learned a bit

Saturday last week I represented the Portnov School at the College Fair in Milpitas, CA. It was organized by several Asian communities - Korean, Chinese, Vietnamese. However, it is not strictly Asian. There are visitors of all the ethnic backgrounds there. I met one of my former graduates. She is from India. Her spouse works for Oracle and he responded to an insider mailing with an invitation to the event.

The Fair is well organized. High school kids come with their parents to listen to multiple speakers on various aspects of college education. SAT preparation and college financing were probably the hottest issues discussed.

We had a very nice booth with vertical retractable banner (you can see it in Sofia's office) and table cloth with the school logo. I cannot say we got lots of attention. The reason is very simple though - most of the visitors focused exclusively on freebies given away by some exhibitors - mugs, pens, brochures, catalogs.

The most valuable lesson I have learned there: it is not the place where we can meet our target audience.