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.

It’s time for a fractured fairy tale: Spinning the Web: P.R. in Silicon Valley, courtesy of the New York Times.  Once upon a time in a Sand Hill Road conference room, an entrepreneur, a VC and a PR consultant met to discuss the launch of Wordnik, a website about language and word usage. The PR person suggests a press tour of leading tech blogs (TechCrunch, GigaOm, etc.).  This suggestion is rejected by the VC as not a good match for a language website. Instead, they decide that they would have influential Silicon Valley entrepreneurs mention Wordnik in social media.  As so it came to be.  Digg founder, Kevin Rose, twittered that Wordnik was “truly amazing.”

From there, people started madly retweeting, which led to Wordnik becoming a trending topic on Twitter. Then, everyone in the Valley was abuzz about Wordnik. People will look back on these past few months as the “Summer of Wordnik.” And they all lived happily ever after.

Except that in the real world, the launch of Wordnik went virtually unnoticed.  As Michael Arrington reported in TechCrunch, Wordnik received a small blip in traffic and then quickly returned to its previous minuscule level. Since this is a fractured fairy tale, the frog doesn’t get turned into a prince.  But there are some lessons to be learned.

Hipsters vs. Word Nerds:  Before starting a launch plan, the first imperative is to determine “who is the target audience?” Then, look for the best way to reach them.  Here the target audience was …. Wordniks. The VC was correct that word nerds really don’t follow mainstream tech blogs.  But targeting hipsters using twitter is more about making a fashion statement than a viable launch plan for a language website.  

Something Old, Something New:  Much of the debate generated by the Times article is about whether social media is replacing PR. This is based on a false premise. The rise of new technologies doesn’t mean that the old technologies are banished to a virtual thrift shop. The new supplements the established. The old technology adapts to fit in with the new. At the time of the original Fractured Fairy Tales, PR people mailed press releases to the local newspapers. Today, the number of communication tools and influencers has increased exponentially. But press releases now incorporate SEO and still remain in the mix.

PR and Social Media, Better Together: Combining PR and social media into an integrated strategy can deliver great results. PR provides an efficient way to quickly gain traction with the targeted influencers and audience. Social media builds connections with these folks.  By social media, I mean participating in conversations on Twitter and Facebook, joining the blogosphere by writing and commenting on blogs rather than having Internet celebrities tweet on your behalf. You could argue it would be better to just use social media to gradually grow an audience (especially with a niche product).  But these days, VCs and board members want to see immediate results, as evidenced by Wordnik’s VC participating in the PR discussion. Though prior to launching a PR campaign, it is important that the product is ready for the attention (see: PR for Tech Start Ups – Are you ready for your close up?).

The Happy Ending: Completion of a product launch should be the first of many interactions with customers, partners, and influencers. There are many opportunities to build, even on a less than successful launch. After all, it’s more important where you end, than how you start. And this is where this post happily ends.

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.

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.

As a follow up to my post last week, it seems that national news is not the only thing people are Tweeting these days. I thought you might also be interested in some of the upcoming tradeshows that are embracing social media.

Even tradeshows in traditional brick and mortar industries like construction are jumping on the social media bandwagon.   On Friday, BUILDER Online let everyone know that they will be Tweeting throughout the 2009 International Builders’ Show (IBS):

“BUILDER Online will be there, posting daily from the press room to keep you informed about the latest products, news, and business strategies even if the travel budget doesn’t permit you attending in person this year.”

And they linked through to the social media seminar at IBS. Looks like an interesting seminar, incorporating social media into an industry tradeshow.

A few other publications at this week’s show that will be Tweeting live:

ebuild

EcoHome Magazine

Are you attending? Please keep us updated on Twitter. If so, be sure to tag your live Tweets – #ibs09 {http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23ibs09}.

See you at the show either live or on Twitter!

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.

There’s no question video is infiltrating every last inch of both the tech industry and our online worlds. Here at Vantage we have been filming, editing and posting videos for our clients for almost two years- discussing a product, defining tech terms, or talking about a successful case study. One example of an effective client video we produced is below.

How Does RFID Work?

In the first month of this video’s posting on YouTube it was watched over 80 times. That is a lot when you consider that all 80 of those people had to specifically search out the tags we included.

So, what’s the next step? Where will online video take us next? I predict that more and more of your standard news found on the web will take the form of short informational videos. Why, you ask? Here’s the rundown:

We attend many tradeshows throughout the year for our clients. Standard PR to gain coverage at these shows includes getting a hold of the press list as soon as it’s available and pitching for meetings via email and phone. If they’re lucky, companies get a few feature articles out of the deal, but more often than not the reporters are so overwhelmed with the amount of news coming out at the shows that they end up frantically throwing together ‘news roundups’ of all the announcements and exhibitors get somewhat lost in the mix.

This year, things have taken quite a turn. We arranged over 20 video shoots for our clients at Interop and NXTcomm, which is significant considering the number was ZERO in 2007. Some reporters are now doing nothing but filming executives all day, every day of the conference. This has resulted in fantastic coverage for our clients with minimal work involved on the reporter’s end. As media continues to evolve to meet changing demands of online consumers, new opportunities correspondingly emerge; video is just the beginning.

As Rob Adler mentioned in his blog posting last week, Vantage garnered over 100 “briefings” for seven clients attending NXTcomm. Along with the quantity, it’s important to note the format of these briefings. The days of the pen and notepad seem to be quickly disappearing when it comes to briefing formats with press and analysts.

A significant number of the NXTcomm media and analyst briefings were in the form of a live video interview or an audio podcast conducted from the vendor booths. No pressure. It’s also important to note how the media has evolved and has realized to keep their audiences engaged; they have to add more visual and audio elements to the news-reporting format.

This new age format puts new pressure on vendors to be prepared to take briefings now via “live” interviews. Working with a communications firm like Vantage really helps with this process. Not only do we garner the briefings at tradeshow events to help maximize news announcements, but we also help clients prepare for the “live” interview, which is quickly replacing the pen and notepad format.