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If you're reading this, congratulate yourself. You've made it through to the final day of Supercomm. After today, this year's show will be nothing but a dream. Perhaps a lingering headache from one too many Old Styles, or a churning gut from that Chicago style hot dog, will make the memory last another day or so. But after attendees and exhibitors wave their final goodbye, they're left with perhaps a solid lead or two on new technology destined for network deployment; for the lucky few vendors, perhaps there's a new job in the offing or a very large contract took its first steps this week.

For most, though, the week ends with a bag of tchotchkes, which, given it's Polish origin (via Yiddish), is an appropriate memory from a city with more Poles than anywhere in the world outside Warsaw.

As simple as they seem, the little gifts given out by vendors at the booth are a good, albeit artificial, barometer of an industry's — and a vendor's — health. Good gifts are an indication that the company has cash to throw around since most suppliers would sooner accept a case of the German measles than some vendor's stock shares. And beware the supplier not bearing gifts. What exactly are they hiding?

So what did you get? For some reasons that perhaps might make a fine sociology dissertation one day, T-shirts had been a staple of the trade show biz since at least the Internet boom. I suppose there could be some rationale behind it. Most of the new attendees at the shows in those days were fresh out of college, or still in it, and had wardrobes consisting largely of 100% cotton blends. I've got an entire collection of T-shirts from extinct vendors sitting in my garage. They make fine absorbents for assorted spills.

The austerity age (2001-2004) saw tees replaced by utilitarian items like pens and sticky pads. Many even dumped their giveaways not out of concern for the budget-busting load that comes with $3 T-shirts, but out of respect for the overall dour mood. We're not quite back to a golden age of a T-shirt at every booth and a steak dinner for every buyer, but we're getting there.

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