Stranger Than Fiction

If you’re going to put on a show, at least have the decency to put it on somewhere worth visiting. The Consumer Electronics Show takes place every year in Las Vegas. Nice. The nearest Europe has to CES, called IFA, takes place in Berlin ever year. Also worth a visit. In years gone by, 3GSM, now to be called Mobile World Congress, used to take place in Cannes. More recently, it’s found a home in Barcelona. And Barcelona, at this time of year, is a sight to behold. It’s almost worth starting a mobile business just for an excuse to come. Let’s hope the organisers never decide to stage it in the UK, and face the choice of the NEC or Excel.
A word first about the organisation. On arrival at the airport, there was an MWC Information Desk telling me about the free shuttle bus running to and from the exhibition venue, the Fira. So far so good.
On visiting the Fira yesterday to get my press pass, I was given a Travelcard to get me round on the Metro and the buses for the duration of the show, together with login details for the free wi-fi. It hasn’t started yet, but already, I’ve got a good feeling about MWC 2008.
That feeling was confirmed on the underground when I read one of the articles in the Informa magazine included in the press pack. On 1 April last year, we ran a spoof story - in England, 1 April is known as ‘April Fool’s Day – about a dog you could control via SMS. Reading the magazine, I learned to my amusement that Swedish network Telia Sonera has started fitting SIM cards to dogs, in an attempt to counter the problem of the 15,000 dogs that go missing in Sweden each year. Stranger than fiction. If you’re reading this Telia Sonera, could you at least have the decency to stump up some money for the IP around the idea.
We’ll be spending the next couple of days running around the show, trying to pick up on as much of the action as possible. We’ll be filing copy as and when we get the chance, so Mobile Marketing Magazine won’t look quite the same for the next couple of days. We’re sitting on literally dozens of press releases, but for now, we just want to focus on bringing you as much of the news from MWC 08 as we can.
If you see us (we’re the ones blatantly wearing the ‘Golf Sale’ type T-shirts with the magazine’s URL emblazoned on the front and back), please feel free to stop us, swap cards/buy us a beer as you see fit. And if you’re at MWC and have some news you think we should hear, please email  it to the usual address. (See left-hand sidebar for details).
Enjoy the show.

David Murphy
Editor