From: Ramon Chen
Sent: Tuesday, August 15, 2000 9:00 PM
To: *ALL MetaTV
Subject: Hot News Alert: MetaTV at Kagan
Day One of the Kagan show and MetaTV is a sponsor. Our little cocktail shindig isn’t till tomorrow night but already our sponsorship is paying dividends.
Paul Kagan opens the conference by mentioning the sponsors and we kick off with a very nice plug indeed.
Then comes the first panel, an interesting mix of cable (CEO Insight group), satellite (Pegasus, VP), some <never heard of you, I’ll have to phone a friend> Wireless company and Commerce.TV of all people.
Anyhow, cutting to the chase, Insight talked about their local focus (e.g. Rockford, IL) and their partnership with Commerce.TV. Commerce.TV basically said that “we only do cable, satellite doesn’t work for our purposes”. Talk about giving away marketshare!
Pegasus speaks and we all await with baited breath the MetaTV mention. NO MENTION! What happened? The panel completes and they take questions from the floor.
Just as disappointment starts to creep in, a hand goes up in the audience.
“Errr this is xxx, (VP Biz Dev) Intellocity, I have a question for Pegasus.” UH-OH what is this guy up to …
“I was wondering, I don’t understand Pegasus’ relationship with DirecTV, who owns the content?”
What kind of a question is that? Talk about showing your ignorance about Pegasus’ business! Oh but it gets better, much better …
Xxx of PEGASUS: “Well actually we own the content and in fact METATV, ONE OF THE SPONSORS HERE IS OUR PARTNER, WORKING WITH US TO HELP BUILD OUR INTERACTIVE TV PORTAL”
Thank you Intellocity! With competition/enemies like that we don’t need any friends! Talk about teeing us up. I really think he had no idea that Pegasus was our customer. I think he just wanted to ask a question to get his name out into the audience. He later asked another one of a panel of portfolio managers “Do any of you own the stocks you recommend?” Good grief, this guy really asks the probing questions.
So immediately after the first panel we get people coming up to us asking us about our technologies, maybe we’ll kick Intellocity a finders fee for any of the multi-million dollar deals that we sign as a result.
…. Cut to later in the day at the Commerce.TV booth, xxx and myself standing staring at the Commerce.TV demo.
Matt:”So this doesn’t look very well designed for TV”, refering to the pitiful UI on the screen running under PowerTV.
John:”So tell us all about Commerce.TV”
CommerceTV salesguy: “Well it’s like this ……. <insert everything you would want to know about commerce.TV …. Oh by the way, MetaTV, what do you guys do?”
John:”We basically do everything you do but better and a whole lot more that you don’t do” <Just kidding he didn’t say that, but we were thinking it>
Sales guy shuffles off to get some of the free food being offered leaving us alone at the Commerce.TV table.
“Hi MetaTV, I heard about u guys, what do you do?” says an attendee representing e-business partner potential, Best Buy Inc.
Matt:”Well we syndicate existing eBiz sites with no changes to your existing infrastructure and make the UI TV centric. In fact <pointing to the Commerce.TV screen>, see this, it’s not very TV centric. The fonts are too small, we fix it so that it looks a lot better than this ….” <clutching my sides laughing>
John and Matt leave, having made a very compelling point to the man from Best Buy with follow-up potential. I return to the Commerce.TV table.
CommerceTV salesguy:”Did I miss anything?”
Ramon “No, not alot happened here, thanks for the demo …”
End of Day One.
Tomorrow … the MetaTV sponsored cocktail hour and maybe some news about a last minute MetaTV panel entry … stay tuned.
Over and out …. Capt. Midnight (Sent 12:00am EST on the nose)