Let me sum up today with a generalization: Buy our product.   I really didn’t know what to expect from today’s speakers and for the most part, I was disappointed, because what I did not expect was to sit through speaker after speaker punting their company and product.  What I was hoping was to watch engaging speakers talk about how to really leverage the mobile platform and build engaging campaigns.  Yes, MMS and mobizines may be new for some people, but they’re just another channel to push stuff at you.  I guess in light of the speakers yesterday, it was just a bit dissapointing.

There were two that I did enjoy though.  Brian Richardson from Wizzit Bank was clearly passionate about using the mobile platform to bring banking to the unbanked and it came through loud and clear.  The other presentation was by Leon Orsmond who was also engaging and entertaining, but somewhat controversial in his views.  At least for most of the audience.  While a lot of people were getting their panties in a knot, what they failed to grasp was that at last a speaker had made them think.

I made some notes/questions/objections to some points that were raised:

Exactmobile said that they could get the MSISDN through WAP, but the last time I checked, that header comes through as empty.  I guess the operators are only forwarding that header on to the Exactmobile domains.

Then someone (I forget who) in the mobizine/thumbtribe presentation mentioned that they got a 72 hour swell forecast especially created for them by some guy in the US.  I wonder if they had ever heard of Spike and wavescape.co.za who has been doing this with alarming success for a fairly long time.  He also questioned the validity of MXit as a commercialized marketing channel.  I think 35 000 subscribers in 24 hours isn’t doing too bad.