Well, we made it! We’re in Phoenix for Greenbuild 2009, and we’ve already seen some exciting new companies and products on the show floor. Plus we shot some great videos for our clients, CALMAC and IES. Here is a video of our first day at the show:

We’ve got two days packed full of meetings and additional video shoots with Serious Materials and YKK AP, and somewhere in there we will head over to see Al Gore deliver the Keynote and Opening Celebration tomorrow night with Sheryl Crow. (And just in case you aren’t here in AZ, you can check out live streams on Greenbuild’s website.)

We are looking forward to meeting green building professionals sharing their visions for the future of the industry, as well as the editors and bloggers who write about it along the way. Melissa Hincha-Ownby of Mother Nature Network has already blogged about the event. Lloyd Alter of Treehugger is here, too. Along with 24,000 registered attendees, according to the records when the show floor opened at 5:30 this evening.

Check back here daily for a round-up of news and views from the show. Next week, we will do a show wrap up. And we’ll be Tweeting live from #Greenbuild09 the rest of the week – follow @catrionaharris, @mariegoltara and @toryk for your green building fix this week.

Nine months and two Facebook redesigns ago, Jennifer Kutz wrote a post about the Wisdom of the Crowd Goes to a Trade Show. She discussed the trend of trade shows opening the show agenda selection process to their audience.  She mentioned one proposed panel in particular: Privacy and Personalization – Oxymoron or the Perfect Match?, for the SXSW Interactive show in Austin, and invited people to vote for that panel.

As SXSWi just completed, I thought it would be fun to fill you in on how things turned out. Our efforts to get the word out about the panel was successful. Privacy and Personalization – Oxymoron or the Perfect Match? received enough support that it was selected. The Guardian featured the panel in an article: @SWSXi: The impossible balance between privacy and personalisation?, and called the topic: “one of SXSWi’s core conversations.” The picture on the top left of this post is from the panel courtesy of the Guardian.

The experience also gave us an insight into the power of blogs and social media to create conversation about key issues.  We used Facebook and Twitter to point people to Vantage Points to get the word out. Rather than asking or pitching people to vote for our client, all we did was to discuss the topic and offer people a link to vote. This was a departure from the traditional PR model. But we believed facilitating conversation was more appropriate for topic and the SXSWi show audience.

The wisdom of the crowd approach has extended to voting for awards. This year, CTIA is allowing people to vote for its Emerging Technology Awards and Best of Show.  One of  our clients, Ditech Networks is nominated for its cool mStage platform which allows people to use their voice to access web applications in the middle of a mobile phone call.  You can read more about it in Technology Review. If you would like to vote for mStage for Best of Show, follow this link and choose mStage (third from left on the third line) as one of your favorites.  Feel free to check out and vote some of the other great nominated products too. It is good to part of the crowd that leads.

Update: Tweet Up location: The Las Vegas Hilton, the Pool Area on the Third Floor. The Hilton is connected to the North Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center.

Attention all folks attending CTIA in Las Vegas. Our friends at Qik will be hosting a Tweet Up on Wednesday,  April 1, at 7-10 pm.  This is a great opportunity to connect with people interested in the intersection of social media and the mobile industry. This also is a great opportunity to build on the success of the Tweet Up at Mobile World Congress.

The location is still being determined. You can sign up and get more information at http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=69119667494. If you are not on Facebook, feel free to post in the comments section if you are interested in attending. I will pass the information to the folks at Qik.We will post updates here on Vantage Points and on Twitter, Facebook, etc. Check for hash tag #CTIA on Twitter.  For more information about networking events at CTIA, check out the awesome list from:

Mobileslate: http://www.mobileslate.com/blog/2009-ctia-spring-networking-events/

Look forward to meeting you there.

The best part of a global show like Mobile World Congress is that you get tuned in to how the rest of the world lives. When it comes to mobile phones, most Americans expect to carry one phone and sometimes will carry a Blackberry for e-mail and regular handset for phone calls. After watching one person after another pulling out a never ending variety of handsets over the course of the day, I started polling people as to how many handsets they were carrying.

The typical person from EMEA or Asia was carrying a minimum of three phones. One person pulled out four, jokingly said (I think) that he had one for each wife. The typical explanation was a Blackberry for e-mail, an iPhone for applications, and then a Nokia or three depending on countries (and marital status). This could explain the relative health of the mobile phone space.

As for iPhones, universally, they were jail broken (manually “adjusted” to allow it to used on any mobile carrier’s network). People looked at my AT&T iPhone with a mixture of pity and disgust usually reserved for naive children. Invariably, they would show me a great application, then shake their head and say that I can’t get it because my phone was “on network.”

Social networking on mobile phones seemed to be in the early adopter phase. While I saw plenty of tweets and Facebook updates, I did not see many people using their phones to deliver them.

As the next major wireless show, CTIA, starts in less than a month, we will report back if there is a major difference in phone habits from the U.S. based attendees in Las Vegas.

This year, I used the power of social networks to expand my Mobile World Congress experience. In past years, I took a tunnel vision type approach to the show with my experience the sum of previously scheduled meetings and press briefings at the show.  With social networks, you get the sense of being part of a larger experience.

Following other Mobile World Congress attendees on Twitter gives the effect of flipping across multiple channels where you tune in and out of different people’s show experience. Before the show everyone is preparing for and traveling to the show. The effect is like the opening number of a Broadway show, where everyone sets up their roles in the show – like Putting it Together from Sunday in the Park with George. It is hard not to get caught up in the anticipation and the sense that you are part of something bigger.

Each day before I arrived at the show, I checked in on Facebook and Twitter to see what my Tweeps were up to at the show. It ranged from reporters who were providing real-time reports from a seemingly endless run of handset and OS press conferences to hung over people that missed their first meetings of the day. If it was happening people were tweeting it and it created a fascinating kaleidoscope.

Readers of Vantage Points know that I was part of arranging the first Mobile World Congress Tweet Up (an in-person meeting of people on Twitter and other social networks). The Tweet Up was an opportunity to share opinions about the show and the future of mobile. It also generated over 300 hits to Vantage Points. Between the Tweet Up and posts on Facebook and Twitter, I now am part of the global mobile community, although I never had met most of the people before the show.

As we move from Mobile World Congress to CTIA, I intend to build on expanding this social approach to trade shows. Look for a Tweet Up in Las Vegas, and more interaction with the global mobile social community.

The news from Mobile World Congress 2009 had a lack of  breakthrough technology announcements. Rather, the show’s focus was on upgrades, and execution (read, sales). The biggest  news was around application stores to compete with Apple’s App Store. In fact, so many companies announced application stores, that it appeared that GSMA had included in an application store press release in its Exhibitor package.  Even Billing/OSS vendor Amdocs got in on the action. Of course, announcing a store is easy. Filling it with applications that people regularly download is another story, probably one for Mobile World Congress 2010.

On the networking side, the news centered around LTE, a technology that will be used to migrate mobile carrier networks to 4G.  Verizon Wireless named Alcatel-Lucent and Ericsson as its primary vendors for its initial LTE network.  LTE is an acronym for Long Term Evolution. True to the name, its deployment is not imminent. This was underlined by key supporter, Vodafone, which announced at the show that it moved back its anticipated deployment date until 2012.

As for the show itself, attendance dropped under 50,000, which was significantly down from recent years. Still, other Telecom trade shows would be ecstatic if they attracted 47,000 official attendees. Lower attendance also meant less people hanging around stands with nothing to do but looking at their Blackberries. The no shows also meant that the number of people better matched the size of the show floor and city. Gone were the 30 minute bathroom lines and most people were able to find rooms in town.

Rather than showcasing the latest and greatest, people came to Barcelona to do business. According to GSMA, 50% of the attendees was C-level.  Accordingly, people that I spoke to unanimously felt that the quality of meetings were very high.

Still, next year will be the real test of the success of this year’s Mobile World Congress. Most companies locked in their 2009 participation in 2008 before the current financial crisis. Strong renewals will mean that the quality over quantity approach is a sustainable business model.

I promised lots of reporting from the show. Accordingly, I have two other Mobile World Congress posts coming up. One will be about social media at Mobile World Congress. The other will be about the difference in mobile phone ownership between the United States and the rest of the world.

Update: Tweet Up at Mobile World Congresson Wednesday Feb. 18 at 5 pm. Location: 7 Sins, Muntaner 7, 08011. Please check out http://blog.pr-vantage.com/?p=1036 for more Tweet Up details.

Surprisingly, less than a month before Mobile World Congress 2009, no one had set up a hash tag on Twitter for the major wireless industry trade show. A “hash tag” uses the symbol – # – followed by a name to allow people to search and find information on Twitter. With a hash tag, people attending the show could connect with other people at the show. Also, people not attending the show could follow in real-time what was happening at the show.

So into the breach jumped the Vantage Communications team. With the help of Tory Klaubo, we checked out who recently had posted Tweets on Mobile World Congress. We then got a discussion going and came up with #mwc09. Then we tweeted the name out to the community, and it was retweeted and retweeted. Our imediate goal is to connect more people attending the show via Twitter. Eventually, the plan is for me to be Live-Tweeting during the show.

Although social networking will be a hot topic for MWC 09, it is surprising that the organizer, GSMA, is not actively using Twitter, Facebook, etc. to enhance the experience of people attending the show. There have been sporadic posts on social media about trying to make a connection. Yet, there seems to be a large void in connecting these people. With travel budgets under siege, trade show organizers need to go the extra mile. Using social media to make connection seems like an easy and inexpensive way to add value.

Until this comes to pass, Vantage is stepping up. Join us by spreading the word about the show via Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. To keep up with my Mobile World Congress experiences, follow me on Twitter: @robadler. If you want to meet at the show, e-mail info [at] pr-vantage.com, leave your contact information in the comments or send me a message on Twitter.  But social networking will only be successful if  we all are responsible and take action. Look forward to connecting with you.

As I prepare my talk for the Evolving Business Models and IPTV for ITEXPO East 2009 on February 2 in Miami Beach, I’m thinking that  the crux of my message is the importance of customer service and offering a more than satisfactory customer experience. At the same time, the provider must leverage its core strengths while moving into contiguous areas and properly market these services.

IPTV enables service providers to transition from traditional landline offerings to becoming entertainment providers with product bundles that meet customers’ needs and allow customizable selections. These operators are moving beyond “you can have any color car you want as long as it’s black,” to serving the iPod generation of customers who want to be their own programmers. To succeed, providers must have service tiers that are attractive to a range of subscribers from the more technically advanced to the least sophisticated users. Customers care about services and elements such as convenience, choice and control—not technology—and providers need to focus attention on the former items.

In order to retain customers, communication is key. While customers may leave due to price and product quality, the number-one reason why customers desert their providers is due to dissatisfaction with customer service. Telcos are becoming more creative with customer service and are turning to social media sites for assistance. Though none has gone as far as Comcast, which has a customer service representative regularly monitoring Twitter.

I hope you’ll join me at the show and at the panel on Monday at 3:00 p.m. Scott Heinlein of Juniper Networks will also be there discussing how service providers’ current business models need to change. As a past attendee and speaker, I know that the show brings a good crowd of interested, educated providers and vendors and great conversations and discussions. It will be interesting to hear what people are thinking in these “interesting times.” I’ll let you know when I return.

This week, over 120 companies will be launching products at one of two trade shows focused on start ups: Demo 08 and TechCrunch 50. Having worked with companies launching at previous Demo shows, I know that preparation for these shows takes an incredible investment of time, resources and money on the part of the start up. Unfortunately, when two similar shows occur at the same time, the one predictable result is that spotlight is removed from the start ups, and the volume of news makes it much harder for any particular start up to attract attention.

As previously noted, more people read about a trade show, then attend. This means that garnering press coverage is one of the most important aspects of trade show exhibiting. This is especially true when the trade show is sponsored by a major media organization – in this case TechCrunch and IDG News.

With the first two days of each conference completed, what can we say about the press coverage. Much of the mainstream media coverage has been about the organizers, the competition, and comments about commenting about the competition. The two shows also have generated a firehose of information.

Quite frankly, with 120 companies in 2 days, the overall impression becomes a blur of start ups with mobile, social networking, video, microblogging, advertising platforms. To make matters worse, there also is a CTIA Wireless show in San Francisco this week with hundreds of companies vying for press attention.

For companies that are not exhibiting at these shows, avoiding issuing news during high traffic trade show weeks becomes an imperative. The collateral damage from these simultaneous shows is not limited to exhbitors.

As our online worlds become more and more social, conversational, and collaborative, we are seeing many traditional PR processes evolve as well. One of the most recent changes we’ve witnessed is how our clients submit to speak at industry events. No longer are we simply writing an abstract for the presentation, putting together a bio for a company executive and clicking ‘send’ on an email.

Several events are now actively involving their audience in the selection process, and allowing potential attendees to vote on the sessions they would be most interested in seeing. Some of these shows include Oracle’s OpenWorld, the Web 2.0 Expo, and Enterprise 2.0. Some potential speakers have taken it upon themselves to use their blogs to promote submitted panel ideas- see a good example here.

One of our clients is currently in the running to present at another popular tech industry event, the South by Southwest Interactive Festival next March 13-17, 2009. The SXSW voting process is probably the most technologically advanced and socially-savvy we have seen yet. Their ‘Interactive Panel Picker’ interface allows anyone to go in and browse suggested panel ideas (along with 50-word descriptions), organized by technology area, and rate the panels they would be most interested in hearing about at the event. Loomia’s topic is Privacy and Personalization – Oxymoron or the Perfect Match?, which will expound on the controversy that online ad targeting (i.e., Beacon) and personalization has created in terms of user privacy standards.

If this piques your interest, you can vote for it here- and feel free to pass the word along!