After posting that I was going to be at the Mobile World Congress this past week, some of you may have wondered why I didn’t put up any posts. Let’s put it this way, a few friction points emerged.

Roughly 50,000 people attend the MWC, and although I heard pre-event rumours that attendence was down, once there, it was apparent that was a media red herring. It couldn’t have been more crowded. There hapened to be a bus strike which started on the first day. Taxi ques were roughly 75 meeters long.

Winjing is not my style, but think of my past week as, Snap, Crash, Lost, Vandalized

Snap. One Fried Computer Battery
While in London the weeek before, my computer battery died-it no longer was willing to hold a charge. Only way it worked was if plugged into a wall outlet. Pretty inconvenient if you want to take notes or blog while in a presentation at the biggest mobile convention known to man, especially since auditoriums with 1000 people don’t have outlets at every seat. Argh.

HTC smartphone OS crashes
My HTC Dash, essentially a small computer with a phone, which runs an operating system just like a desktop, crashed on Sunday. I turned it off to board my flight from London, then couldn´t turn it back on. Late Sunday afternoon in Spain is not the time to have a technical retail need of any sort. Everything is closed. Everything.
Spent 75% of my Monday missing the mobile payments seminar I was keen to attend, looking for a local phone store with SIM unlocked phones. Found one, chose a phone, went to the caisse. Figured I would peek at my Dash one last time before putting down the cash. Miraculously it was working. Cash outlay averted but mucho time and emotional cycles lost as well as 40 text messages and six voice mail missed. Avoid the Microsoft Windows for Mobile. At least I was connected again.

Lost: My Lifebook
I´m anal when it comes to organizing prepartion for serial meeting environments such as these, so I use a small three ring binder which had my briefs for meetings, my schedule, and topics for a media event with a panel of experts I was chairing. Monday evening while at an InMobile cocktail event, where I was drinking nothing stronger than diet coke, my knapsack unzipped in transit and the notebook stumbled out, lost. Major bummer since I had to recreate from memory three remaining days worth of scheduled meetings, plus notes from 4 days of a consultancy I just started, and my direction notes for the big event my client was hosting in two days. Time to scramble.

Voyage Return: Vandalized
I thought I had put all my problems behind me when at 04:15 am on Friday, serendipity played it’s hand while I walked out of my apartment to run into a Japanese fellow getting into a cab with an MWC knapsack. He invited me to share it to the airport, then proceeded to pay it all since he was a journalist covering the event. Great start to the day and time to bury the past week. Alas, by the day was over the Yang had overpowered the brief Ying. When I picked up my garment bag at IAD (Washington DC-Dulles) a locked compartment had been torn open and clothes, files, and my CardScan device had been pinched. If you want to read the full diatribe on this click here.

I’ve never been a believer that real deals are executed here, this is all about meet and greet, but the bump in factor, and the specatacle is always worth the effort. Compartementalizing the technical issues out from the rest of the event, it is really quite good to be there.

So, I’ll be posting a number of items from manual notes I took over the next few days covering a swath of topics, analysis and impressions. Hope the latency gap doesn’t diminish your interests.