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| On February 24, 2010, the Telecom Council of Silicon Valley held a debrief meeting regarding the recent MEC show in Barcelona. About 85 telecom executive attendees participated in these three debrief session which I moderated for the Council, a portion of whom had attended the show.
My observations from the show, below, are not a complete, edited research report, but are some interesting take-aways of relevance to Silicon Valley. I have included some brief analysis and implications. Since its launch in 2007, the Council’s debrief meetings were never intended to be one person’s observations. We believe that major trade shows are too big for a single person to successfully capture. We’ve learned that the best way to get the shows’ highlights was to bump into people we know, on-site, and ask them “What have you seen so far?” - it is social networking 1.0 (flesh version), with a recommendation engine. When you think about it, this is something we all do naturally, and it improves our show experience. The Council debrief sessions are built around that natural concept, expanded to include the discussions at the debrief itself. During the debrief, each attendee is encouraged to share their most important take-aways, and their opinions in the moderated discussion. As a result of this broad net, it is unlikely that some important trend shall elude our group. The Council does not capture and distribute these proceedings (in audio or video), because they want to ensure frank discussion on site. So, the main value is reserved for those who attend - be sure to come next time! I have, however, prepared these notes from the show, and included anonymized contributions from the debrief sessions. Indirectly recognizing the value of the Council’s process, Fierce Telecom’s Dan O’Shea said in a Jan09 newsletter (with regards to their CES report), “I can't imagine even a couple more days would have allowed me to see everything. If ever there was a show built for social networking dynamics, it is CES. It is certainly massive and tries to be all things to all people, but it was apparent last week that your best bet to navigate the event was to find people with like-minded interests and talk to them about what they had seen and still wanted to see. And it was easier than you would think to identify your own niche community among the throngs. I don't think I have ever been at a trade show before last week where the simple questions "Have you seen anything interesting?" or "What's the big news at the show?" didn't come off as polite but empty-headed conversation. At CES, those questions were asked with genuine interest, and in most cases, they were met with genuinely-interested answers.” Naturally, we disagree with him that this process is exclusively useful at CES, but he seems to be on board with the fact that social and crowd sourcing is critical to catching the best of the show. So let’s do it. |
