The Portable Media Expo officially started today and like I predicted in my previous posts, it was well worth the trip! The day began with two keynote address. The first speaker was Leo Laporte who touched on where podcasting was headed and the second speaker, Ron Moore (executive producer of Battlestar Galactica), brought a entertaining insight on his experience of podcasting in the entertainment business. Great way to start the day off!
Following the keynote, Mack and I manned our booth to prepare for the opening of the expo and although I can't say how it was like last year in the beginning (we missed our flight), it almost felt like people were lining up for Wal-Mart. Crowds of people were literally waiting to get in!
There were definitely a lot more attendees than last year and the people generally seemed more knowledgeable as well. We gave out lots of business cards and got lots in return too. We even got a condom, though we eventually gave that away to a passer-by who had need of it. One of the attendees, Rob Safuto of Awakened Voice, also dropped by and gave me an interview on Podcast Spot. You can listen to the interview here (starts at 19:35 and is 8 minutes long) . I tihnk my interview describes our product pretty well and am fairly happy with it except for my slight misstatement (check the comments). Generally, I think people are pretty ethusiastic about our unique service so hopefully we'll get more traffic soon.
I'm very happy with the Portable Media Expo so far and I even hear that next year might be a 3 day event instead of 2 days. My only complaint is the extortion-like prices of the convention center. We have a fairly simple booth with a display light at the top but in order to use the light, we had to pay $90! Obviously we declined and within minutes, a staff member was at our booth to unplug our light. Seriously, a light should not cost $90!
Anyways, we'll probably turn in early tonight. One more day!
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