Mixed Signals
Any sufficiently advanced information is indistinguishable from noise
Monday 15 December 2008, 5:26 AM
One small step...
To my surprise, I'm in Cape Canaveral. The Kennedy Space Center is just down the road, I'm sitting by a pool in what appears to be a James Bond set circa Doctor No, and around me the final preparations are being made for the Orange Partner Camp.
That promises to be great fun. There are hundreds of developers, telco people, Orangeists and others who will be talking to each other about the future of mobile, and a light smattering of journalists among them taking notes. That's during the day. In the evening, there are activities. And all the time, we are in a most unusual hotel, which has lots of motel-style apartments – if this was a movie, there'd be a drug deal going wrong in one, adultery going even more wrong in the next and a dead Mexican in the aircon vents between them. But what this hotel mostly is, is pink. Perhaps there was a Hello Kitty convention here last week, and they haven't cleared up properly: perhaps it's always like this. But it is very vivid, very unsettling, and very, very pink.
Getting here... well. Never go to Florida in the latter half of December. The flight from Gatwick to Orlando was two hours late – knock-on from BAA messing up Stansted earlier this week – and stuffed to the tips of its wings with prepubescent children on their way to Disneyland. They cope with two hour delays, and nine hour flight times, even less well than I do.
But I'm here. It's midnight Florida time, 5am London, and three helicopters have just flown overhead in tight formation. In a few hours, I shall be rested, fed and ready for Orange action, UMA, LTE, APIs, TV, Symbian... but all through the filter of what new services will work, what will make money, and how does a mobile operator deal with a commercial landscape where mobile operators seem ever more incidental to the big stories.
If only it wasn't quite so pink...
That promises to be great fun. There are hundreds of developers, telco people, Orangeists and others who will be talking to each other about the future of mobile, and a light smattering of journalists among them taking notes. That's during the day. In the evening, there are activities. And all the time, we are in a most unusual hotel, which has lots of motel-style apartments – if this was a movie, there'd be a drug deal going wrong in one, adultery going even more wrong in the next and a dead Mexican in the aircon vents between them. But what this hotel mostly is, is pink. Perhaps there was a Hello Kitty convention here last week, and they haven't cleared up properly: perhaps it's always like this. But it is very vivid, very unsettling, and very, very pink.
Getting here... well. Never go to Florida in the latter half of December. The flight from Gatwick to Orlando was two hours late – knock-on from BAA messing up Stansted earlier this week – and stuffed to the tips of its wings with prepubescent children on their way to Disneyland. They cope with two hour delays, and nine hour flight times, even less well than I do.
But I'm here. It's midnight Florida time, 5am London, and three helicopters have just flown overhead in tight formation. In a few hours, I shall be rested, fed and ready for Orange action, UMA, LTE, APIs, TV, Symbian... but all through the filter of what new services will work, what will make money, and how does a mobile operator deal with a commercial landscape where mobile operators seem ever more incidental to the big stories.
If only it wasn't quite so pink...
PreviousComments on this post
The complaints about your surroundings fall on deaf ears. Hey its FLORIDA in December!!!! You could be shoveling snow instead dude!
I guess being the Boss has gotten to you. Have another Hurricane or two and ease on down in that pool chair. It must be tough to be British and keep that stiff upper lip thing going. ha!
