—–Original Message—–
From: Ramon Chen
Sent: Tuesday, September 26, 2000 8:16 PM
To:*All MetaTV
Subject: Capt Midnight: Digital Hollywood Day One: Gossip, Big Brother and Mysterious Attendees
Day One at Digital Hollywood
Well say what you will about Hollywood, a star around every corner, people whispering in the aisles about the latest iTV developments and characters galore.
Here we are in the Microsoft Booth at DH in the “prime” location thanks to our inside connection. Thanks to Matt and Jeff set up our spot with our demo the day before, we were open for business.
The show is surprisingly busy with quite a lot of traffic, we definitely received good interest from some prominant eBusiness sites which could turn out to be very good leads. Joined by John and Julie from TAG, MetaTV was certainly represented in force as we fielded questions and demonstrated our Portal demo on a webTV box.
Gossip: As we stood in the long lines at Lunch and mingled, eventually we ended up sitting at the table with the Director of Content for Intellocity and Tracy Swedlow of ITVT! Talk about eating in silence, now was not the time to let any gossip or trade secrets slip. Certainly Tracy was trying her best to get scoop but we only gave what was publicly available (we’ll see what the ITVT headlines say tomorrow)
Big Brother: Even the Government wants in on Interactive Television. A strange older gentleman was very intrigued by our relationship with Pegasus. Apparantly he worked for the Government agency that monitors the Satellite microwaves and wanted to know what we were doing with Pegasus. We assured him that our Portals made very efficient use of any bandwidth. Satisfied, he shuffled off to see if he could make the session on “Government branded Interactive Television Portals”
Mysterious Attendees: This wouldn’t be LA and Hollywood without some strange characters. People with their badges turned around – “preferring to remain incognito”. Competition? Maybe. Perhaps they were embaressed by their inferior offerings to reveal who they worked for. Perhaps they were looking for a job?
So far so good. Digital Hollywood is definitely full of spice and intrigue.
Tomorrow, we’ll check out some of the sessions and like a good Soap or Drama, I’m sure the plot – like all good soup – will thicken.