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Sassy69
New member
ck2006 said:
It was - I got to catch up w/ a couple good friends and saw more of the area. It is so beautiful out there and you constantly run into amazing people - the famous and the quietly famous. There's such a spirit of "it can be done" out there.
As far as the convention - I stayed downtown -- discovered that despite staying at a hotel where there is razor wire around the parking lot, the area isn't that bad. The LA Convention Center is right next to the Staples Arena where the Lakers, etc. play. That area is nice -- nice hotels along the strip from the sports areas to the downtown area. Just outside of that it gets a little dicey -- Koreatown & Chinatown are accessible from there - I drove thru but didnt' stop, but very easy to get to.
The convention itself - the topic was wireless / mobile & entertainment. This is a hyugely booming field of technology but the funny thing is that the technology is there, but they are still trying to find the audience. Use of wireless devices is much more prevalent in Europe & Asia due to the fact that the cost of landline connectivity (phones & internet) is much higher and potentially less available than here and also there is less time in cars - i.e. more use of public transportation and use of public facilities vs private, so people rely on their own personal mobile devices for IM"ing, etc. Therefor things like SMS / mobile advertising, gaming, downloading music & movies is much more common there than here. So all these companies that do that sort of thing are jockeying around trying to get relationships w/ the wireless carriers (Cingular, Verizon, T-Mobile, etc) and then workign w/ the carriers to come up w/ a viable pricing program so people will buy and they will make money on it. A good example of the problem w/ free widely available & in-demand entertainment is YouTube -- they move the most video on the internet but still aren't making a profit - there is no solid revenue model for them yet. And if they do put soemthing in place, how will it affect the viewer's use of it? (I.e. if they start loading up the interface w/ ads?)
Anyway very interesting stuff. But generally there are a handful of unique services and lots of different companies doing pretty much the same thing - so I just wandered around & talked to people about their business. I did meet some really interesting people at a happy hr on Tues and made some contacts. Will follow up w/ them this weekend.
The one thing I can report on is that I ran into a guy I used to work with at the convention right before I left. We exchanged business cards and chatted a little. He called today and said he had spoken w/ his CTO and this company is primarily developers - i.e. they don't have a real solid product program or someone driving it even though they are one of the longest running wireless services companies in the industry (LMAO -- since 1999...! Similar situation to the internet era...) so they have lots of good will / good reputation but really need to start formalizing their approach to competitive products & services. (That's what I do well!) So I'm sending him my resume & he will try to set up an interview this week. Pretty cool! Doesn't get me out of Atlanta, but it is a good opportunity.
I could rattle on & on about the evolution & adaption of technology - I've been an observer of "behavior" for so long and I've had the chance to be on the leading edge of certain technologies over the last 20 yrs, LOL unfortunately I always ended up switching jobs just BEFORE the "leading edge" passed into the "viable, revenue-generating product" stage. 
... the "time between sets" was impressive as well !!!!You are just great on punch lines too! Have a great day!
