Posts Tagged ‘conference’

LGPradaWatch: final thoughts on a most unusual press conference

Friday, November 21st, 2008

We got to spend some time with LG and Prada, on the arrival of their new handset the LG Prada.

The press conference was an unusual one for us which threw us a bit, as there were no presentations, no speeches, no agenda, all very very unusual. It came off much like a round table debate than anything else, as for one we were all just sitting around on chairs in a hotel suite.

The two key people were introduced, Chang Ma the vice president of marketing strategy at LG’s mobile communications division and Matteo Sessa Vitali, the licensing director at Prada. Both of which represented their respective companies and could speak knowledgeably on their behalf.

We all expected for them to talk about the phone, its features, its abilities, what it can do, how it differs from the last handset, etc. Instead they just dove straight into the Q&A. All very strange and we weren’t sure what to do, apart from just go with the flow.

There are two ways to approach and act in a Q&A; either to ask all your questions or keep them until the end and get some face time or a briefing with the people there. There’s always a worry if you blurt out your questions, others can make note of the answers and you’ll lose your exclusivity over the points you raised.

Some of the more respectful titles out there will credit you if they use your question and answers. Therefore still giving you somewhat of a thanks which can also be found on the article is properly SEO’d. Most won’t though and therefore you hold your questions until later, when you can ask them in the privacy of a closed session. There were no one to one meetings, or scheduled private briefings after the Q&A.

As this hack has been burnt so many times, I just sat back and let the enjoyment begin on what will be the most unusual press briefing attended in a long long while.

Questions were answered and asked from the likes of CNET, TrustedReviews and Pocket-Lint with responses from the guys at LG and Prada. Often discussions opened up between journalists, which all seemed to bemuse the hosts as to why these were going on.

Points were made, journalists counter them amongst themselves, the hosts weren’t always sure whether to chip in or not. All in all it was confusing, bemusing and a tad unorthodox.

Not a great deal of information was passed along at the event, nothing really on the handset just all about the deal between them both and that’s that. Anything we really wanted to ask but were too afraid to was all left to us and our own deft investigations for later.

But we’re happy to have these little odd meetings, as it just makes life a lot more interesting.

Next Generation Billing 2008 conference

Monday, September 15th, 2008

Next Generation Billing 2008

If you’re interested in billing then you might want to attend Next Generation Billing 2008 in Budapest.

I’ll be taking part in a discussion on developing a customer-centric approach to billing.

Next Generation Billing 2008
24 – 26 November 2008,
Corinthia Grand Royal Hotel, Budapest

You can find out more details here.

The key conference equipment - phone and HD camera

Thursday, September 11th, 2008

You need a good phone — a Nokia E90 in this case — and a shit-hot HD camera. And you’re good to go for covering CTIA.

In previous days I used to carry a big bag filled with laptops, chargers and the like. Now I have it nailed and I’m conferencing-light. It’s the only way to do it.

Posted by email from MIR Live (posterous)

Mobile Industry Review Show - Episode 22

Monday, August 25th, 2008


Mobile Industry Review Show - Episode 22 from Mobile Industry Review on Vimeo.

This week we’re bringing you an absolute WHOPPER of a show. A veritable whopper.

1. We’re committed to bringing you our show from different, unusual and picturesque locations around London. I think we’ve beaten everything so far by filming from the Tower of London. Special thanks to Tim at the Historic Royal Palaces publicity department. As you might imagine, with almost 1,000 years of history to play with, Ben had a field day with his facts segment. ( 00:47 )

2. We take a look at the 3 Skypephone S2. ( 02:19 )

3. We’ve got lots of news and commentary on last week’s happenings. ( 05:15 )

Lastminute Labs, Google Gears ( 05:16 ), Orange hiring iPhone-fans ( 08:40 ), Nokia Maps

( 09:16 )/Lonely Planet ( 09:37 ), Blackberry Bold’s browser issues ( 10:26 ), IKEA MVNO ( 11:51 ).

4. James Body of Truphone makes an appearance. ( 07:03 )

5. Review of Etymotics Headphones. ( 13:47 )

6. Mobile Industry Review website news… including quick overviews of our upcoming jobs section. Plus: We’ll be at the Future of Mobile conference coming up soon. ( 17:20 )

7. Future of Mobile Conference.  ( 18:58 )

8. Special Sony Ericsson News.  Very special stuff. ( 19:18 )

9. The first EVER Whatley Goes Wild segment.  Including a special N95 8GB-protective-strap.           ( 19:40 )

10. We announce the winners of our competitions.  ( 22:48 )

11. Dan get’s his present. There’s almost a tear shed…( 24:37 )

12. James talks about the Nokia N78.  ( 25:36 )

Video Feeds:

- 3GP mobile video feed
- Downloadable video feed (roughly 190mb)

Our man at VentureBeat’s MobileBeat conference

Monday, July 28th, 2008

Our man in the Valley is conferenced and partied out. Until Monday when it all begins again.

Over to Mike…

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As your man in San Francisco, I was able to give SMS Text News a mole down at some serious schmooze-fests this week down in Silicon Valley.

For this post, I will talk about VentureBeat’s MobileBeat 2008 this Thursday, then I will talk about Friday’s TechCrunch August Capital meet-up in another post. This was the first MobileBeat, and the first conference put on by VentureBeat. I have to say the event was really, really, really good. It was supremely well attended, and the list of speakers was really outstanding. Very top level folks from AT&T, Google, Yahoo… you name it. An excellent place to meet really influential people–you know, the kind who never return your emails? There were also some really interesting startups that presented, most notably AdMob and Loopt.

AdMob won the Best Infrastructure award, and demoed their shit-hot new iPhone ad network which was good enough to secure them the Audience award as well. Loopt also won two awards, Best Application award and Best CEO Under 35 for Sam Altman, Loopt’s two t-shirt wearing CEO. He lived up to his reputation and wore two on Thursday, a class act all the way.

So what about AdMob and Loopt? Why were they worth singling out? Well, because they carried the theme of the day–some new fangled gadget called the iPhone. Every panel was talking about the iPhone, in every way. Mostly, it was just a love-fest, with people claiming that apps now don’t have to face the walled garden of carriers. The few people who dared question the infallible iPhone said that the iTunes App Store was just a different walled garden.

So anyways, AdMob has these really cool new iPhone ads that allow users to interact with them in meaningful ways–not just a click. For instance, you can enter your ZIP code into an ad from Best Buy, and they will launch the Maps application on the iPhone and show you a pushpin scatter chart of the closest Best Buy stores. Or, the other example they showed was an ad for Loopt, which would launch the App Store and the user could download the app. AdMob CEO Omar Hamoui also said that you could advertise music, and then do a direct link to the iTunes music store. Very cool stuff. Watch the video.

The reason why I wanted to talk about Loopt was because of what Altman said about developing for the iPhone. He said that developing for the iPhone allowed him to innovate so much, that many of these new features made their way onto the Java version or the whatever version that apps are called that aren’t for the iPhone, I don’t know. He also said that iPhone users were more engaged than his normal users–they spent more time using the service, they invited more friends and they transferred more bits from the servers–to the tune of 47% more than average.

I’ve actually got some mixed feelings about Loopt, mostly privacy concerns and just general creepiness. I was able to obtain a special Loopt beta (read) at the TechCrunch event on Friday too.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I remain your SMS Text News mole, deeply embedded in the SF mobile scene.

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Nice one Mike. Keep ‘em coming!


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