Internet World 2007

Went there this morning...what can I say...erm...cannot praise it too highly?

The event website is very 1.0....took ages to find out when and where it is and get a map, and the online sign-in form was extremely intrusive imho. Nearly didn't bother. When I got there I found the walkways cramped and hardly any seats etc to have a coffee or meeting or chat. Also the program guide had talk streams on different pages so its time consuming to find out what talks are on when. NMK's Ian Delaney also has some pithy comments about the process of processing us, so it wasn't just me...

As to the "look and feel" of the event...well, in the spirit of Bubble 2.0, I can report the lesser clad marketing auxiliary count (or whatever they are now called in this PC age) was higher than I have seen for many a year...but the "Web 2.0" arena was tiny. Suits abounded, geeks were sparse - it almost felt like IT shows in the 1990's when the Internet was this weird thing some oddballs were doing in the corner. Clearly this is the bit that is making today's money.

(In fact it seemed to me to be a mainly Direct Mail event, with some Internet attached.)

In the spirit of constructive criticism, I'd say that the overall feel was that everything - from the website on - was for the benefit of the sponsors and exhibitors, and the comfort / convenience of the customer seemed to be a secondary consideration. Next year just walk through the whole experience from the point of view of a potential customer too!

And maybe it was just me...feel free to comment....but it was such a pain shouldering along in the narrow walkways, I was delighted when the person I was meeting there showed up, and we could slope off for a coffee - and bumped into a few other old colleagues, which after all is what this is all about.

Various members of the Broadsight team will be visiting over the next few days, so we will add a fuller account as data accumulates.

Postscript...we came, we saw, we took away the goodie bags...not much to report really, most of the stuff there was hardly ground breaking, and we all found ourselves repairing to the pub / coffee shops soonest.

Three panel sessions were reported on by NMK editor Ian Delany, here and here. and the obligatory Mobile Web 2.0 one here