A review of the Wireless Enterprise
Symposium
By all accounts, the
Wireless Enterprise Symposium in Atlanta was a resounding success. RIM
not only put on a well organized event, but they made it worth the time
and expense of attending by providing a good mix of information,
networking opportunities and vendors with relevant products.
In spite of the mix of big
name sponsors and the effort to not be specifically a BlackBerry event,
it was just that, a BlackBerry event. This is a good thing though as
there are no other conferences that focus so much on BlackBerry related
products and information, and I think there is a need. There will be a
WES 2003, but they should consider renaming it to a "BlackBerry
users conference" and allowing the focus to rest on their
shoulders.
The highlight of the event was
the keynote session with Jack Welch, former CEO of General Electric. In a
question and answer session with CTIA
CEO Tom Wheeler, Jack spoke about management and business in the
"straight from the gut" style that has made his book such a
success. His non-Politically Correct tell-it-as-it-is style was humorous
and enlightening as he talked about the various techniques he used and why
they did or did not work. Everyone at the conference received an
autographed hardback copy of his book "Jack,
straight from the gut". I haven't read it yet, but I will, and so
should you.
In addition to all of the
information, there was a very nice dinner and casino event sponsored by HP.
The food in general was excellent throughout the event, but this dinner
surpassed all of the meals. Its not often you can say you had a good meal
at a conference - this one was outstanding.
The casino event was great fun
too. Gambling with fake money and casino operators that didn't play
exactly by the rules made it a fun event, even if you were loosing.
Afterward, you could buy raffle tickets with your winnings (or what you
didn't loose) and try to win some nice autographed sports items. The whole
thing was seriously dampened by one upset patron who destroyed a box of
cheerios autographed by John Andretti because he couldn't trade it for
another prize he later won, however.
Still, the whole event was
great fun and worth the time and money to go. I will make more updates
later which will go into more information about those things concerning us
developers.
Go to
Part 2
