This past week in California I stayed in five different hotels. During the night after night of packing and unpacking, I set out in a quest to see whether any of the otherwise nice hotels I stayed in would distinguish themselves by leaving a halfway-decent giveaway pen in the room. Often these are the crappiest of ballpoints, and I leave them behind.
What I found instead was four instances of spare, earthy-seeming black pencils. They solve the problem of a giveaway that is both cheap and nice-looking, but the resurgence of the non-mechanical pencil (which I welcome) raises a long-forgotten issue: that of sharpening.
The conference I went to, which also jumped on this bandwagon with its giveaway, offered electric sharpeners in the lobby for use between sessions. For that and for many other details that make their machine so well-oiled, I applaud TED for their thoughtfulness.
