From: Ramon Chen
Sent: Tuesday, May 07, 2002 8:24 PM
To: *All MetaTV
Subject: Capt. Midnight: NCTA Report – Easy for MetaTV in the Big Easy
New Orleans, Crescent City … also known as the Big Easy ….
We got off to a terrific start with our press releases early Monday morning (see previous Midnight).
Then we set about showing our wares at our pod at the Motorola booth. Because we were given a full day at our station we relied on a terrific team effort by everyone pitching in to staff the pod for an hour or two each day. This allowed each of us to stay fresh as well as participate in other meetings outside the show floor. Participating at the pod was, as always interesting, it gave us an opportunity to tell our story to new faces as well as to get feedback and listen to what they felt about our value proposition. Also the usual suspects from the major netops were cruising the floor, so our presence, however modest, still gave us good visibility. Our professionalism also did not go unnoticed as some of the other partners such as Liberate and WorldGate left their pods unattended for sometimes hours creating a very negative impression for anyone walking by looking in, not to mention Motorola their hosts!
In addition, having a partner pod at Motorola was much better than some of the other companies who decided to do a small compact booth which basically left the impression of 1) either a last ditch effort or 2) a small company just trying to get started.
We leveraged our fact cards (or in this case in New Orleans our “tarot cards” See http://www.metatv.com/solutions/tours.htm ) as we had planned when we created them for NCTA 2001. We had some new architectural cards (not yet posted on the web site) which we also used to emphasize our iTV applications platform that automates and optimizes. Our demos on the show floor and in the suite ran smoothly without a hitch and we were able to get all of our points across thanks to the usual efficient setup and management by Jeff Kirsopp and Craig Thomson.
NCTA 2002 this year was small, the show floor could easily be covered in less than an hour. The excesses of shows past were no longer and the attendance was definitely down. Most of the giveaways were very modest and there were no lines to speak of for to meet the celebrities who attend the show to help promote their networks. Michael Eisner (CEO Disney) was seen on the show floor, as was Jerome Bettis promoting ESPN, Adam West (Batman of old) for MTV Nick at Nite) to name a few. Once again we did the right thing by doing a hotel suite for our meetings (which have been going extremely well) as most of the companies I spoke to said that this would probably be their last NCTA. Some of them were even saying that there would be no Western Show for them either. So we continue to make budget conscious P2P investments to achieve our goals without spending a lot of money.
Our applications were featured at our partner booths (Liberate showing Comcast unbranded DVD as well as Cox San Diego. OpenTV showing Zap2IT) and our brand and reputation continues to ring strong among industry pundits. People who we hadn’t seen since the last show NCTA 2001 in Chicago were congratulating us on our incredible success and announcements. Of course little do they know … we’re just getting this party started! We will be amazing them further with more great announcements soon.
All in all, we continue to get great things accomplished at NCTA. Perhaps “easy” isn’t quite the right description as it doesn’t reflect the hard work and dedication that the team here is putting in to represent us and meet and influence the right folks to ensure that we win great new business and solidify our industry leadership position. However, the fact remains that people are going out of their way to want to meet with us. The fact is that we can garner attention and press without having to shout from the rooftops. The fact is that we continue to be recognized as not only a “survivor” but one of the “thrivevors” of the iTV shake out (just like we planned two years ago. Perhaps it will be a new CBS reality show about iTV companies).
So NCTA at the Big Easy, was easy for MetaTV in those respects and tomorrow we complete our mission with further business meetings, show floor demonstrations and the customary packing up and trek home.
Photos of our pod and our presence around the shows including shots of our meeting suite will be posted when we get back in the office.
Over and out for now.
The Capt.