twopointouch

Quick report from last Friday’s Fuel conference. It was a well-planned day which I thoroughly enjoyed, so well done to Ryan, Keir and the Carsonified team. It was also good to meet up again with a couple of fellow bloggers. Andrew from Imagination has written already about the attention to detail shown in the design of the delegate badges, while Vero has covered off the presentation from the lovely bearded chap from Innocent drinks.

For me, the stand-out presentation was the case study regarding the launch of Virgin America, a new internal airline for the States and part of the Virgin group. It was founded in 2004 and started flying in September 2007. How come the launch took over three years?

As the presenter, Alex Hunter (Virgin’s Head of Group Online Marketing), pointed out, you might imagine that this would be a piece of cake. Virgin is a massive international brand. The group’s Virgin Atlantic service is well-known for being good quality and reasonably priced.

Not so. In some respects, the brand’s fame worked against them. The proposed launch met with loud protests to the US Department of Transport from the existing internal carriers. Virgin was a foreign company, they argued. Allowing them to launch would directly damage US businesses. It appeared (quite rightly) that a lengthy fight would ensue.

Virgin was hamstrung in two ways during this period. They couldn’t unveil the new planes’ impressive features and specifications - for all they knew, they’d be completely out-of-date by the time they launched. Nor could they use Richard Branson as a brand ambassador - his nationality was exactly the reason for which they were facing problems from the DoT. Also, money was more of an issue than you might imagine: they had already bought the planes and empty planes are a very expensive liability.

Legal fencing, defencing, shilly-shallying and fence-sitting ensued, for months. Finally, on December 26 2006, the DoT delivered its verdict: Virgin America would not be allowed to fly. This was a black day for Alex and the company. To that date, the Department had never reversed its decision on such a matter.

So Virgin decided to take the fight to the (metaphorical) streets.

They submitted a time-lapse video of one of the planes being painted to YouTube. Over the weekend, it garnered 200,000 views and found its way to the front page of digg. It wasn’t an especially remarkable film from a technical perspective, though at that time, there was nothing like it (all their rivals have since copied the idea, apparently).

They launched a blog called Let VA Fly (now defunct), unveiling all the sophisticated new features on their planes. At this point, they felt they had nothing to lose, so they might as well. They included an online petition, and forms which would create and send a correctly worded and legally valid complaint to individual users’ representatives, senators and the Department of Transport. Technically, it was a fairly simple site, based on open source Wordpress software. But it did the job.

Perhaps because the incumbent US internal airlines are so very terrible and anything better sounded like Nirvana, perhaps because it was pitched as a classic David and Goliath story, the blog was a great success.

They decided to launch a competition to let readers name the first eight planes, then capitalised on this by specifically inviting blogosphere celebrities and idols, Stephen Colbert and Cory Doctorow, to name two (Air Colbert and Unicorn Chaser, since you asked). They created T-shirts and gave them away. They put one of their planes into the San Francisco Valentine’s parade.

Perhaps crucially, they managed to get other online communities to do much of the marketing of the site, and driving people to sign the petition and send form letters, for them. The site or posts on the site hit the front page of digg eight times. Realising that community was clearly sympathetic, they invited Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht to film their diggnation video cast on board one of the grounded planes, driving scads of geek traffic to the site. Later paid and unpaid spots on diggnation worked equally well.

In total, 75,000 letters were sent to the authorities and 30,000 people signed the petition. It was enough. In September last year, the DoT reversed its decision and the service took off.

If you need the history - I had a big problem with the company (blogged here), which was resolved the day after I wrote a post about it on this site (blogged here).

A lot of people might see this as a victory for blogs and bloggers. I’d agree, sure. But, on reflection, I think it’s more of a victory for Carphone Warehouse.

It’s easy for anyone to set up a blog, and give themselves a platform on which to rant and rave about whoever is annoying them this week. OK, it takes a bit longer to establish any readership and authority, and being a decent-ish writer helps, as well. However, any old fool, given some determination, has the chance to do that, on a purely hobbyist basis. As I think I have sufficiently proven.

What’s harder than setting up a blog, is for big organisations with established systems, hierarchies and hide-bound tradition to change. To move from a position where “it’s not this department”, “you need to speak to X about that” and “sorry, there’s no one available right now.” To get to the position where an individual within that organisation can say, “I can see what you’re saying. I’ll sort it out now.” Not only that, but they’re polling for your opinions and ready to intervene where they can be helpful. That would be an enormous culture shock for most large organisations.

My negative experience using the traditional lines of communication, which I persisted with due to a misguided sense of moral decency, versus the guerilla efforts that eventually achieved results, speaks volumes. When the latter worked, it saved portions of C/W’s reputation in some ways, not to mention my relationship with the company. But again, it was the company’s response, not my rudeness (as my nana might have perceived it - and she still oversees my conscience), that got the result.

Technology and social media, in particular, are allowing these transitions to happen within even the largest organisations. But it’s happening on uneven levels and with unequal levels of satisfaction when it comes to people’s experience. The future is spead unevenly, like William Gibson said. The overall movement is positive, though.

Sometimes that’s because it’s on an outlaw level, outside the traditional hierarchies, and the bosses don’t even know about it. Often, it’s on a project basis or through an external agency. Sometimes, it’s individual champions injecting change into organisations, because they actually care about the company or organisation they work for. Less commonly, it’s established by enlightened managers. When the instigators (I still have the C/W hold music in my head) - whatever their methods - achieve real results for the company and create more trust, faith and humanity, the message will spread, inside and outside the company. When they get it right, the impact on the bottom line can be enormous.

Many of us end up hating the large organisations we’re forced to deal with; creating mechanisms to rehabilitate those relationships is crucial. Personal publishing platforms and individuals empowered to engage with them are the way to take this forward.

That organisations as large as C/W are allowing that to happen is extremely heartening. Facilitating that, of course, requires organisations to allow for extreme trust, 20% time or flexible working hours, mobile technology, and a realisation that your reputation belongs with your customers, not the marketing department.

NB: This story has a happy ending!

Dear Carphone Warehouse,

We used to have it so good. I’ve been a customer for about four years, and you’ve never put a foot wrong until now. You found me good deals and gave me good advice on tariffs and handsets. But I’m not sure our relationship can recover after this week. Having memorised all your hold music over the period, might I suggest ‘we have got to get it together, now‘?

The Story

I was phoned on May 12th by Gareth Whittle from your outbound O2 sales team to tell me I was due an upgrade. Splendid, I said, what have you got? After much wrangling, we agreed on a Nokia N95 8GB, albeit for five pounds more a month than the price you published on your own website (I see you’ve fixed that now). The £35-a-month deal would get me a free handset, more minutes and texts each month than I’d use all year, and most importantly, unlimited data. You promised to send it the next day and I’d have 14 days to try it out. “What if I have any problems, Gareth?” “Oh you can call me on extension 4443220″.

Lo and behold, it arrived the next day - modern logistics can be so wonderful - and I eagerly starting testing all the new functions - it’s a lovely piece of kit. I’d have liked a qwerty keyboard, but figured I could get a bluetooth job from you later. The camera is excellent and using 3G for the first time was a rush.

The Sting

It’s now seven days later and I phone my wife - but who’s this on the line? “This number cannot be dialled - please hold while we put you through to customer services”.

I hold - and it actually turns out to be your finance department.

“Mr Delaney - you have an outstanding bill for (circa) £500. Would you like to pay by credit card?”

“What!!! But I’m on unlimited data - the guy told me.”

“Ah, that doesn’t actually start till the 26th May.”

“But I didn’t know that? How would I know that? You sent me the phone - why would I imagine I couldn’t use it yet?”

Gareth did tell me that the contract ‘rolled over on the 26th of each month’ (his exact words, as I recall - whatever that means). But he didn’t tell me that meant unlimited data didn’t start till May 26. He certainly didn’t warn me about using the Internet before May 26. I had assumed (oh, silly me) that it was the previous 26th, if I agreed to the deal - this was an upgrade, after all. And how would I be able to test the phone in the 14-day cooldown period otherwise? It seemed like common sense that the upgrade began when I received the phone.

I’d made a horrendous mistake. But there’s also been some big communication errors on your part. Of course, you’ll understand and rectify that, won’t you? We’re all human beings, aren’t we? And it’s not as though back-dating the contract by two weeks will cost you any money.

Turns out the lady I’m speaking to can’t actually do anything. I am put through to customer services. They tell me that the sales department concerned has to investigate the problem: their hands are tied. I ask them to put me through to Gareth on extension 4443220, but it turns out he lied to me about that - no-one I am allowed to speak to can make that call. Outbound sales don’t have any accessible phone numbers.

I get put back through to customer services. I ask to speak to a manager. I am put through to a manager at customer services. Turns out he can’t actually call anyone more senior - or Gareth - they are only allowed to send emails. This fact makes me wonder about how seriously you take customer services? Not to worry, though. I’m assured my incident has been escalated and I will receive a call from your sales department within the next 72 hours to resolve the problem.

72 Hours Pass

…And there’s no phone call from your sales department. More lies, then. I call my new friends Craig, and then John, at your Warrington customer service call centre. They both re-escalate my case. I am at three levels of escalation now. I need oxygen, I am so escalated, but evidently not sufficiently so to get anyone from sales to call me. And no, they really can’t put me through to anyone more senior, they assure me that more ‘VERY URGENT’ notes have been added to my case. (Craig and John are nice guys, by the way, being Manchester lads like myself. Useless, in this case, but nice). Apparently, I’ll get a call within another 72 hours.

But hang on. My 14-days’ grace period will expire by then. Walking away from the contract is the only thing I’ve got to trade with, if your people don’t agree that I wasn’t properly informed on the terms of the deal. I talk to Craig and John again and they - very kindly - answer my requests about doing this and tell me I can walk into a shop tomorrow and explain the situation and hand back the phone. And that’s what I’m planning to do - I have to, because the rest of your company might understand the science bit, then.

The Science Bit

• Current disputed bill = ~£500, which I intend to resist paying, and I think I have a reasonable case.
• Value of the contract we’d agreed = 18 x £35 = £630, which I agreed to happily pay. But now I won’t be doing that. You are down £130, at best. Nice move, slick.
• Value of the next ten 18 month contracts after that which I would have signed up for = £6300, or so. You’re down another £5800.
• By the way - value of positive word-of-mouth recommendations from me (which I have given in the past) = at least two or three other customers, maybe more = £12,000+.
• Adverse recommendations word-of-mouth from me (which I will definitely give) = at least -£18,000, since I’ll be very vigorous about that.
• Adverse value of this blog post/facebook/twitter/etc. and the others I’ll publish to your reputation and your bottom line = unknown, potentially enormous.

The Sequel?

I genuinely hope that my next blog post will be entitled ‘How Carphone Warehouse Regained My Trust‘. But that really is up to you. You are a communications company - surely you are a listening brand, as well? Oh yes, one more thing - the ‘Feedback and Complaints’ button on your site doesn’t work at all. Shame, that.

Best,

Ian Delaney

[Readers - want to help? This account combines several more phone calls to make it less boring.

As well as the phone exchanges above, I emailed the text of this post to the chairman, press office and enquiries addresses at Carphone Warehouse in order to give them a chance to do something.  No response, obviously, from any of them.

If you have been similarly disgruntled, cheated and trodden upon by telecoms giants, and Carphone Warehouse in particular, you might like to link to this post (or digg and delicious it) and help damage the company's bottom line by spreading the word. Make a stand, people! You're welcome to take the text as well, providing you attribute it. This is not about popularising this blog: my post rate should show that isn't a factor here.

Legal advice is also very welcome, as are recommendations of UK mobile suppliers who care about their customers. Most welcome of all, though, would be a response from the company itself.]

Update: Had a good chat with Daryl Wilcox, and it looks like we’ve come to a sensible compromise that will allow Tim to do his job and Response Source to maintain its purity. All’s well, etc.

My staff writer at NMK - Tim Hoang - works for the PR company, Rainier, as well. That’s always something we’ve made very clear. I was (and remain I’ve calmed down now - and DW was very charming.) absolutely furious to learn that he has been banned from using the Response Source service today on account of his PR background.

For those who don’t know, Response Source allows journalists to poll PR agencies for help - "do you know any experts on mobile apps?", "got any case studies on businesses making successful use of MySpace?"; that sort of thing, in our case.

One of our key anxieties in the initial decision to employ Tim - who is a paid & taxed employee of the University of Westminster in this role - was making sure that his PR job would not infringe on his duties as a reporter for NMK. It’s an issue we’ve discussed and thought about for a long time, believe me. There are clearly opportunities for abuse, but they’re ones that Tim and I are very well-aware of and perfectly able to execute professional judgement over. Of the dozens of sources he’s used over the last two months, two were Rainier clients - to add differentiation and substance to stories, when he couldn’t find other people keen to comment. (Ironically, getting more of these other voices was one of the reasons he used Response Source). I agonised about both of them for a little while - I edit all his stories - but concluded that the extra comment had justifiable merit. In both cases, Tim informed me freely of the connection; we were transparent about the connection in the stories; and I approved it. After all, I have very little compunction about using people I’ve met in previous roles as sources: that’s what you do as a reporter.

The reason for the ban isn’t known to me in full and was not disclosed, but RS has apparently perceived a conflict of interests, in response to complaints from some other PR agency(ies).

How exactly would this work? Tim polls other PR agencies for input into a story, and that would be a problem for them for what reason? Do they think that he wouldn’t include input from competitors? So why ask the question in the first place? That he would sneak questions like ‘fancy a new agency?’ into his interviews? I think the yellow-pages might be a better source.

One more thing annoys me about this. I am the editor and publisher of NMK. Why didn’t anyone take whatever concerns they have to me, rather than a third-party? Or to my boss, the director of NMK?

F**king infantile. I will not use Response Source again while this situation continues. I have forwarded this info@dwpub.com - if anyone has a better contact, let me know.

At FOWA yesterday, one of the most interesting presentations came from the founder of etsy - a marketplace for handcrafted items - Robert Kalin.

Kalin is like a Web 2.0 version of Holden Caulfield - he starts his talk:

…dropped out of high school at 15. ran away to live in boston with my uncle, who was like the purple sheep of the family. eventually found my way to new york. had about 15 jobs. i was a carpenter for a while. that stuff is brutal. started to want to get an education but couldn’t pay. so i attended classes at about 8 different colleges using stolen IDs. doing it this way meant i really took ownership of my education…

And so on. He hasn’t got any slides: he’s typing addresses into his web browser to bring up pictures he’s posted to his blog. He’s chewing gum while he speaks, which is amplified by his microphone. Some of his demos aren’t working.

It’s pretty weird, but also absolutely mesmerising. Etsy is an arts and crafts marketplace, but it’s also, as it turns out, a challenge to the state of commerce on the web.

Regular commerce has become less and less about people and the inherent value of objects. This is reflected by the history of money. Money used to be made out of gold - coins had an inherent value. Then came banknotes, which were symbols of value rather than possessing a real value themselves. Now it’s about credit cards - money has become 1s and 0s flying across the Internet. At the same time, corporations own all the means of production and distribution. Commerce has become utterly dehumanised and psychotic.

Etsy began with the idea of a marketplace. But a return to what a marketplace used to mean before the twentieth century. Marketplaces used to be communities, places where people exchanged stories and news as well as money and goods. Because etsy is just for handcrafted, bespoke items, it brings the humanity back into trade. Every item is its own story and has a human face attached to it. This means that etsy attracts and retains audiences. People talk about what they’re buying and selling, because the items are interesting and unique of themselves. Buyers develop relationships with sellers and maybe ask for a personalised version of items they’re interested in. The software is supposedly finding ways to increase the face-to-face contact between members, to add a bit of a virtual world element, but it isn’t working today.

But the broader premise of the site is working. Etsy has 100,000 sellers listing 10,000 items a day.

Really interesting stuff - the more virtual many aspects of our lives are becoming, the greater the value being put on personal and personalised relationships, services and items, like we’re unconsciously reaching for balance.

Aussie PR bloggers Trevor Cook and Lee Hopkins have released the second edition of their e-book about social media, now updated to cover Twitter, Jaiku, Facebook and Second Life. As previously, it’s a free PDF download.   

It’s a good read and covers some lesser-known (in the Northern Hemisphere) examples of brands and organisations using social media to engage with people.

Corporate Engagement: Second edition of social media paper released

The fantastic news about the last.fm deal surely proves that you don’t need to be in Silicon Valley to score big time. Well done to Martin Stiksel and his team, and screw the naysayers who claim London (and the UK) can’t support Web 2.0 projects. Those guys slept in tents on top of the office for their first three months. They had the courage to do it because they believed in the idea, and now they’re getting the rewards.

Last.fm have a brilliant, clever, innovative service. That’s what’s netted them £140mn (yes, pounds sterling, not dollars). Ideas and Execution make real money; not geography, though I think the London internet community boosts every business that is a part of it.

This isn’t just about London, though. We’re currently having conversations with an organisation about putting on events for a major northern UK city that has over 70 internet startups under its belt. And I can bet that city won’t be in the top three you can name. This is everywhere.

Bubble 2.0? You bet. But Sarbox regulations and similar restrictions in the EU mean there’s no equivalent IPO fever and less real money changing hands. The people that get burned will be the gamblers, not your pension funds.

Unless, ermm…, like me you elected to put your pension fund in high tech, high risk stocks. Hey, I was young at the time!

I’ve been told-off by proper, real-world people twice in the last week or so for not blogging enough. Sorry. Writing about digital media at work seems to have decreased my desire to write about digital media some more once I get home. (To counter some objections, NMK has a ‘beta’ RSS feed here). However, my boss has agreed that ‘blogging time’ be allowed as ‘work time’. Not sure how that pans out when I say, “Sorry, no articles on the site today, but I did do a blog post.” I hope to do better. kthxbai.

Anyway. Tomorrow, I have been asked to say a few words on the topic of ‘Blogging 2.0′ at a roundtable discussion organised by Microsoft and Weber Shandwick (one of their PR houses). It’s a title that I’m sure will make all regular readers cringe and I’ll be equally sure to point out that it was none of my doing. Since it’s a closed event, I thought I’d share my notes here. Hope they make enough sense to be worth reading.

The future of blogging must be connected to why people blog now

• It’s about our current nature [I am a socialist, not an essentialist]. There is currently a human urge to communicate, share and to connect. Most of us [at the event] are professional writers in some sense and feel that more keenly than most perhaps and do it every day anyway, but it’s not just us.
• Equal current human urge to make a mark or be recorded. Symptomatic of our sense of anonymity and alienation in post-industrial world?, though diaries are hardly a new thing.
• As a convenient tool for knowledge management. Search on my blog is faster and better than search on my computer. [shame on you, MS]. Easier to use than a wiki.
• Self-promotion or business promotion. [let's be honest, eh]
• Public spaces that serve a community function (the local pub, the playground, the park, the village square) no longer exist, are thought unsafe or are no longer fulfilling that function. So we seek alternatives. I have found many RL friends through my blog - that wouldn’t happen if I stood in the park: I’d get arrested or something.

And also why they don’t blog

• Too technical/geeky - - not so for very long - every 16 yr old leaving school now has always had the Internet. They’ve had wikipedia since they were old enough to use it - ‘99. I think it will lead to increased usage of solutions like drupal, joomla and b2evolution, if anything.
• Too much effort - well, it is. It’s not like any of us are getting paid unless it gets us a new job or new clients. Adsense not working e.g. Guy Kawasaki
• Nothing to say - my mum, very english, very humble woman wouldn’t want to make her views public in the same way she’d never write a letter to a paper - but it doesn’t have to be a publishing platform, it can also be a communication platform - nearly all east asian blogs, for example, are for friends and family.
• No time/No interest - I think there may be passive solutions.

Paid-for blogging services?

Models:

• Straightforward hosting - I pay something like $6 per month for hosting and $10 a year for domain name.
• But DIY requires intent. Ppl don’t pay for things or put effort into things they can get for free.
• Typepad.com - £5 a month for a hosted service - has been v.popular with pro bloggers but now haemorrhaging users moving to free services like wordpress.com, blogger.com.
• Wordpress.com - pro accounts for more traffic; more control over design. Not going to do it unless funded somehow, though.
• eTribes.com - bolt-ons for extra space and mobile apps; no one I know uses it.

What other alternatives exist/could work?

Some recent trends and ideas that may show the way forward

Microblogging

• Rise of Twitter, Jaiku, Facebook status messages as an alternative to blogging.
• These things are even more intimate than most blogs - trend towards ’self surveillance’, putting all your activity on show.
• They are about maintaining presence and relationships more than anything else
• Rise of the tumblelog - tumblr.com - more scrapbook than anything else - useful and easy to maintain
• Bloggers often run out of steam - 100x more abandoned blogs than active ones - something easier and less stress-inducing required?

Atomisation

• Thanks to the magic of RSS, the basic atom of the blog is the post. These can be remixed and re-assembled by readers/users anyway they like.

This has led to:

• Rise of the Feed Reader and consequent decline of the page view. Subscribers are a more important index than impressions, if you offer full RSS. And if you don’t, then you’ve lost the attention of the bloggerati. Why should you care? They’re linkers.
• Rise of the widget - it’s RSS for ppl who don’t know what RSS stands for. MySpace, Netvibes, Pageflakes - roll your own internet and never leave your homepage. Facebook apps doing the same for that platform. UK gone facebook mad, it seems, in last month or so.

Collaboration

• Blogging platforms are currently poor on this, hence the rise [in some ways] of wikis, which are a nightmare in terms of user experience. Yet I think the collaborative blog has legs. Forums remain a very strong vehicle and are a product of community. How can we bring that community feeling into the blogging platform?
• Current ‘half-way houses’ are weak for this - Vox, Live Spaces, MU Wordpress remains an under-resourced, niche platform.

Passive Activity

• Tim O’Reilly - “the best web 2.0 services are passive” - e.g. Google search, Last.fm.
• We might be able to passively blog - sites that collect all our activities e.g. iStalkr, tumblr, Facebook apps

Dangers/Counter-Forces

• Spam - spam has already eaten email, usenet and many forums - one reason for rise of web 2.0 services is that email has become so very inefficient for so many purposes. Akismet and Captchas do a sterling job, but the spammers are clever bastards.
• Identity/Privacy Crisis Looming - your next phone will have a facebook interface, a colleague suggested to me other day, and I can believe it - BUT we’re used to our identities being linked to contexts e.g. with mates, with the boss, with colleagues, with family, with lovers. Now, intentionally or not, people are mashing all that up. That’s good in a way, but very odd for most of us at the same time.

I was delighted to attend the Chinwag Live event on widgets last night - perhaps especially since we’re having our own event on the topic next week, it was great to have the opportunity to hear what people are thinking on the subject. The event was extremely well attended and there was some good discussion, especially, as always, after the main panel had finished.

Stand-out quote for me was from a member of the audience, having heard how brands are using widgets as a marketing tool, who said, “err… aren’t these things just a way to get people to go back to your main site?” Nothing new under the sun, Horatio.

Another very interesting reference was to this post on Ventureblog.com by David Hornik about the ‘widget economy’, where the point is made that some widgets have symbiotic relationships with their hosts, while others are parasites. And that this is a challenge to the development of the idea of widgets as a way to create a business:

That challenge is a byproduct of their precarious relationship with the “host” services to which they attach. To the extent those relationships are symbiotic, the combined organism will thrive. However, to the extent those relationships are, in fact, parasitic, the host will need to shed the parasite in the name of survival.

Parasitic widgets are basically out to get you to go to another site. Something that popped up news headlines for example, which took you to a news site when you clicked on them rather than displaying more information in situ.

Symbiotic widgets enhance the site they’re on - things like YouTube videos, maybe something that shows your latest flickr photos, or a music player. Google Adsense for Content is parasitic in the sense that it aims to take people elsewhere, but symbiotic in that it gives a kickback to the site owner if it manages to do that.

Parasitic widgets sometimes seem like the sensible way to make money from the widget model. A media owner flashing up teasers from the site owner’s publication of choice isn’t really giving anything away. It seems like all-win for them. But then again, as a site owner, are you really going to put something up that purely serves as a distraction from your own content? I’d suggest not. Certainly, if you were MySpace, you’d be encouraging widgets that help users make their profile page better, and blocking widgets that send users out of the system. The symbiotic route is a slower burn, but a more secure model.

So in a way, the widget business is a miniaturised version what’s going on with marketing in general over the last ten years. That we’re moving away from a culture in which brands could simply expect to grab eyeballs, attention, custom by virtue of simply being brands to a culture of permission marketing. Where brands realise they’ve got to give in order to receive. The more enlightened brands are going to be saying, “right, we’ll give you this cool doodad that lets you embed exclusive, useful, usable content on your site. Because then we’re helping you and helping your readers. And then there’s a bit more chance that you’ll come back to us when you’re looking for more cool stuff.”

I’ll put the wrinkles bit in a separate post.

Spent the morning at Internet World and will be back tomorrow. However, for anyone who didn’t go today, let me give you the benefit of my initial reconnoitre:

1. Don’t arrive first thing. Such was the excitement that greeted the opening of the doors that there was a real scrum to get through, akin to Top Shop opening to Kate Moss collection yesterday. Sail through 30 minutes later would be my advice.
2. They have a ’system’ for printing out your name badge from your internet registration number. If you arrive during the scrum, someone will nick your badge to avoid waiting an extra minute for their own. That means you have to go back to the entrance and fill in the form again. By this point, you will be fuming - see point one, above. [If anyone meets a version of Ian Delaney who appears well-dressed, youthful and physically fit, give them a clip round the ear from me].
3. You might want to drop the laptop. No power sockets and no free wi-fi will turn the thing into a pointless burden after 2-3 sessions.
4. If you go to a seminar, do sit next one of the PA speakers. The place is really loud and people on the second row of some sessions I attended were complaining that they couldn’t hear.
5. This is very much a business conference/show. Don’t expect too many geeks in heavy metal t-shirts and trainers. Do expect a lot of suits. The Web 2.0 display area contains 5 tiny coffee tables. Email DM companies, on the other hand, command half the hall.
6. Plan your seminars. They were the main thing I went for, yet I ended up missing a couple that I really wanted to go to. One due to identity theft, but one due to poor planning. There are as many as six on at the same time. The Keynote stage was really packed for every session, but some of the other sessions are really good and have lots of spare seats to spread out on.
7. If you are meeting anyone who doesn’t have their own stand, make better arrangements than ‘I’ll ping you an email’. See point 3.
8. It’s in Earl’s Court 2 - so West Brompton is a better stop to aim for than Earl’s Court, all other things being equal.

See you tomorrow, perhaps, when I’ll have dropped that AC/DC t-shirt. I really had the feeling that the event was geared towards ‘mainstream catches up’ rather than ‘come and see the cutting edge’, but am happy to be proven wrong.