The sun is shining brightly in Miami already and it’s just gone 7am. The temperature is set to hit 28 degrees and the venue, the city’s uber-funky Fontainbleu Hotel has got the aircon and the internet connectivity turned up to the max.
And helpfully, especially given yesterday’s diatribe (and diatribe #2) against Vodafone, the entire Hotel area is blanketed with super-fast WiFi.
Today is the Day One of the MEF Americas 2010 Mobile Content & Commerce event. Last night there was a reception for the hundreds of delegates who’ve flown in — and as usual with MEF, I was wading knee deep amongst C-Level and SVP-Level geniuses. I’m always astonished by the seniority of the people I meet.
I’m here for a few reasons. First, I’ve been long developing a key interest in the developing markets that I’ve finally decided I can no longer watch from the sidelines. There’s a heavy contingent of mobile experts from the Latin American areas here and I’ve been thoroughly fascinated by what they’ve had to say so far — and the event’s not started yet. Second, I’m filming — thanks to Nokia (who’re the video sponsor for the event). Third, I’m moderating a panel later today (“Best Bets from the Application Experts”).
The event’s agenda is right here.
I’m going to be getting a ton of interesting people on the camera — one of the highlights I’ve already put in the diary for today is Marco Argenti, later on today. Marco is VP of Media at Nokia. He is responsible for the company’s media services including the Ovi Store. So standby for a good series of mini episodes. I’ve got 30 minutes with him so I’ll turn on the camera and start firing questions and split the footage into a few smaller pieces.
Follow me on Twitter (@ew4n) for updates across the day. I’ll do some more posts here shortly.