The madness that is MWC begins next week

I’m looking forward to Mobile World Congress next week. The action begins officially on Sunday evening.

We’ve got a few interviews booked across Monday and Tuesday then the rest of the week is pretty empty. Deliberately so.

It’s been rather difficult looking at all the email pitches that come in from the PRs. Almost every single one of them is half-interesting. That is, I reckon — with a lot of work and consideration on our part — we could make the company or news semi-relevant. Enough to warrant a post or a video interview.

But it’s a lot of work.

I’ve done this a few times before at various conferences and it’s meant I’ve often had to really work to deliver something I’m really pleased with to you, the reader.

So every time I’m reading an interview request or a MWC PR pitch, I’m reminding myself that I’m paying. Vanity publishing at it’s best. I’m paying for every single minute of the conference. And the multi million pound companies wanting to meet to show me their wares… sorry. Unless it’s really something that our audience will want to hear about… no dice.

Instead we shall be touring the conference and the parties, looking for stuff that we hope will really rock your boat.

There’s a slight possibility that this year’s MWC might actually shock the hell out of us. Microsoft MIGHT announce some real joy. The handset manufacturers MIGHT surprise us. And I suspect the mobile operator CEOs will simply re-hash last year’s speeches. You never know.

Do you remember that company, Scalado? MIR’s Ben Smith found them. I was initially skeptical. Another mobile-software company? I looked back at the original post and my actual words were ‘Another boring Symbian thing?’. Stick with it, Ben said. We did. Sheer brilliance. And the video we brought you of their technology working was simply superb.

That’s what I’m looking for. More of that. More interesting, exciting and stimulating products/services. And I’m pretty positive we’ll have some good stuff for you come Monday.