Telepocalypse

3G sado-masochism

It's my first trip to 3GSM, the mega-shindig of the GSM CartelAssociation (shh, Martin, they're a sponsor of yours -- only kidding guys, really).

And wow, I can tell you all three G's of 3G are hot:

• GGGuerilla Marketing. Chocolates, dancers, strange costumes, segways, mints and mimes. Err, and piles of our own event leaflets secreted in special places (but you guessed that, didn't you). Although nobody had the cojones to bring their duct tape and put some ads above the boys' urinals.

• GGGirls. I guess "content" is easier to spell than "naked chicks cavorting with beachballs". We're not in Kansas any more, son.

• GGGuns. Only conference I've been to where all bags go through an X-ray machine on entry which nobody is watching whilst you walk around the security hoop with the semtex and Beretta in your jacket pockets. As the attendant said to me: "It's a little bit random."

The whole event appears to be a form of self-flagellation where over-dressed businessmen (and telecom is 99.386% men) spend 40% of the day sweatily barging past each other along the sunny boulevard in a frantic rush between meetings. A bullfight without bulls. All we need now are the tomatoes for the handset vendors ("We're the product, you're just the truck") to throw at the operators ("we're the product, you're just the box").

Posted by Martin Geddes at 1:15 PM

Trackback Pings

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.telepocalypse.net/cgi-sys/cgiwrap/mgeddes/MT/mt-tb.cgi/850