From: Ramon Chen
Sent: Thursday, October 19, 2000 7:34 PM
To: *ALL MetaTV
Subject: Capt. Midday – MetaTV Yin and Yang
There was one Yin and two Yangs at the CTAM Broadband conference in Santa Clara today.
But like the old Chinese proverb says “Person who goes to conference, will hear about MetaTV”
The first Yang was Geoff Yang of Redpoint who was the keynote this morning. Of course, MetaTV featured very prominently in his presentation as one of their premier portfolio companies. That was just the appetizer to the main course to follow.
The Yin and the second Yang took place in a panel titled:
The Yin and Yang of Broadband – Chasing the Opportunities, Facing the Challenges
Explore the business potential and key strategies of broadband development. Leading executives on the forefront of new technologies share their vision – and their concerns – of the exciting new products and services coming to the broadband pipe.
The Participants were:
David Barron, Senior Manager, Interactive Television Programming, WebTV Networks, Inc.
Mark Hess, VP Digital Television, Comcast Cable Communications
Andrew Lev, President, MetaTV
Charlie Tritshcler, Vice President, Marketing, Liberate Technologies
Leo Shulman, Co-Founder/Chief Executive Officer, Vicinium Systems
Firstly how we got onto the panel is an interesting story in itself. When we first found out about the conference in Mid Aug, we applied to get onto the panel but were flatly rejected due to 1) the co-ordinator not understanding our value in the marketplace 2) the apparant lack of space on the panel due to the CTAM board having signed off on the speakers.
But, after a few well placed calls by our contact Irv Kalick to well connected CTAMites and hey presto waddya know, an invite for Andrew Lev to participate!
So onto the panel itself. It was as if the whole panel and topic was made for MetaTV (since as you all know we cover both Yin and Yang in a multi-spirit/energy/platform). Both Dave Barron of Microsoft and Charlie T of Liberate were very complimentary of MetaTV and our technologies. In fact most of the questions around walled gardens were directed towards Andrew. With Charlie T even going so far as to say “well I think Andrew would be in a much better position to provide an answer to that question.”
Certainly Andrew took advantage of the opportunity to present our prespectives on portals, articulating our low-to-high-end set-top box support and really hitting the eBusiness and Broadcast companies value proposition spot on. So much so that once the panel was over Starz, Encore, Discovery, Home and Garden and a whole host of other content providers came rushing up to get more information and to exchange cards.
In another great profile for MetaTV, the topic of people operating the PC and the TV simultaneously in the same room came up and Andrew said this was evidence of people wanting to interact with their TV and this was just a baby step toward real interactive TV. The Vicinium guy disagreed and tried to slam Andrew by saying how important it is to support multiple devices operating in the same room and that would become the norm. At this point Mark Hess, VP of Comcast turned to the Vicinium guy and promptly said “Well I disagree, I like Andrew’s idea of the TV portal much better. Why would we want to drive our viewers away from our medium”.
In a final validation of how well MetaTV and Andrew’s participation affected the audience, two satellite representatives (who were obviously spying by being at a cable show – CTAM – cable television, advertising and marketing) were compelled to come out of their hiding to talk about opportunities with MetaTV.
All in all another incredible, high visibility event for MetaTV.
That’s all time for siesta!
Capt. Midday.