Five sentences – update

I didn’t actually make it down to the exhibition floor today. I kept on meeting folk, bumping into people and so on to the point that, rather annoyingly, I had to walk straight past the entrance to the show to hunt for the bus to the Microsoft Mobile party. I’ve got two more days of time to go round the booths and stalls.

This evening I was at three different parties. The first was the Microsoft Pool Party. Nifty. More on that later. Second was the Smaato party at the Star Trek Experience, Las Vegas Hilton. And finally, the MobileFocus event featuring oodles of smart companies, new and old.

Wherever there were stalls, I did a lot of browsing and offered interesting companies the opportunity to give me five sentences worth of news that I could publish. In some cases I got good results, in other cases, I sometimes had trauma getting anything out of them.

One company I stopped at was dumbfounded by my enquiry.

“Er, news?”

“Yeah!” I said, “What have you guys been up to recently, is there anything I can tell the readers of SMS Text News?”

“Er….,” PR girl looks to PR girl who looks to Marketing Manager.

More silence. I’ve got my laptop poised, ready to write if it’s good news.

“Well, er, you could take our press kit.”

“No,” I started, “That’s not quite what I had in mind. I popped over because I thought you might have some news, you know, client news, product updates — anything — that might be worth reporting? Anything come to mind?”

There is, I reckon, a limited amount of effort one should expend trying to extract information from such companies. Luckily this experience was generally an exception. I’ve got a whole host of posts coming from Microsoft to SoundID, to V-ENABLE, Smaato and more.

To aid with my real time event blogging, I got myself a new Apple MacBook Air. The problem with the MacBook Pro is one that I experienced with the MX Telecom chaps on the first day. The Pro is just too big and unwieldy to walk about the show floor with — and more so, it’s a little bit distracting for people when you’re trying to talk to them. There’s also hardly anywhere to put it. The Air changes that. A 4/5 hour battery (if you’ve got wireless and bluetooth off, generally) is exactly what I need for canvassing the halls.

Here’s a picture of me and the new Air that Michael from VSC captured on his Apple (naturally) iPhone: