Much of the mobile industry was in San Diego this week for CTIA, the twice-yearly wireless show that I first attended almost a decade ago.
I hadn’t been for three years and this time I was invited by the organisers to present some awards. I also ran a Speed Session where my chosen eight companies went up against another eight companies in rapid-fire presentations of five minutes each.
It was interesting to see how representatives of each company coped with the time limit. Some were very much out of their comfort zones, but all delivered. My personal low-point was when I had to wear a blonde wig to be part of a particularly diverting presentation, but that’s another story.
The Awards were also interesting. I’d never done something like that before and apart from missing out one award, handing the wrong award to somebody and completely forgetting the Steve Jobs joke I’d started, it was a triumph.
There’s nothing quite like saying ‘And the winner is…’, so I’ll say it now. ‘And the winner is… the Hard Rock Hotel’. That’s because it became the hotel where everybody met up and got utterly trolleyed. The conference hotel aka a money-making machine.
While the mayhem began I was quietly meeting friends who lived in San Diego at the Hilton but joined later. Ah, the adrenalin of having been on stage and instead of Speed Sessions, some Speed Heinekens.
Suffice to say the blonde wig came out, was passed around, street-people joined us on various terraces after the Hard Rock had been vacated, the Gaslamp district of San Diego became like Shangri-La and a cracking night out ensued.
While the oft-discussed trip to Tijuana across the border in Mexico didn’t happen, it was good to be back at CTIA. The next show is in New Orleans in May, should be a ball.
Monty Munford has more than 15 years' experience in mobile, digital media, web and journalism. He is the founder of Mob76, a company that helps tech companies raise money and exit. He speaks regularly at global media events with a focus on Africa, writes a weekly column for The Telegraph, is a regular contributor to The Economist, Wired, Mashable and speaks regularly on the BBC World Service.
