Best Ever Kickstart wraps up
Submitted by admin on Thu, 02/26/2009 - 00:25.
Kickstart 2009 was widely proclaimed MediaConnect's best Forum yet with the revised conference format and the beautiful Sanctuary Cove location winning the approval of delegates.
Day two of Kickstart 2009 began with a robust session with business software companies, where cloud computing was again at the forefront of discussions, followed up by a consumer technology session. Felipe Rego outlined IDC's predictions for 2009; Spinvox announced their text-to-speech launch with Telstra; GoTalk unveiled plans for some innovative new broadband plans; Microsoft's Billy Tucker talked about Windows 7 and Ruslan Kogan charmed the crowd with this passionate presentation, declaring that online retailers were going to wipe the floor with traditional retail stores.
The day's Media Insight sessions began with a discussion on the evolution of the PC magazine with PC User editor Glenn Rees and Australian NetGuide editor Gail Lipscombe, before Brian Corrigan and Nadia Cameron talked about their new roles as editor of MIS and ARN, respectively.
Over lunch, Sony showcased some impressive new features on its new hi-definition Handycams before the conference broke into the scheduled one-one-one interviews. These proved to be popular initiatives and there were more than 200 interviews held over the course of the event.
Palmistry, tarot readings and a hypnotist show set the scene for Monday evening's 'Mystic' themed dinner, where attendees were invited to join hypnotist, Mark Anthony, on stage for some hypnotic fun and games.
Anthony's soothing vocal tones persuaded Merri Mack, Patrick Avenell, Shuna Boyd, Stephen Withers, Emma Rogers, Mitchell Smith, Zara Baxter, Cathy Jamieson, Ruslan Kogan, Rob O'Neill and Phil Sim to take part, and as the lights dimmed and calming relaxation music filled the room, it soon became apparent which participants were most "susceptible" to Anthony's suggestions.
One by one, participants who had not succumbed to hypnosis were asked to leave the stage, until only Merri Mack, Mitchell Smith and Phil Sim remained.
Guests witnessed the trio milking a cow; driving a car; playing the piano; rocking some damn fine air guitar and even giving birth on stage.
Day three began with a comms/hardware session with Con Tzaidas giving a preview to research being announced this week by MarketClarity; Emerson Network discussing a new way to measure output consumption; D-Link talking about VOiP in the SMB space and Netcomm discussing trends in mobile data. The final session of the day was a software and security session which started with a presentation from AusCert's Rob Lowe and some more security insights from AVG's Lloyd Borrett. Pronto Software's David Jackman discussed trends in business software, while LogMeIn talked about freemium business models and its official launch into the Australian business market.
Also a highlight of day three was an interesting Media Insights discussion focussing on the way journalists and PRs use Twitter, which featured freelance journalists Anthony Caruana and Alex Kidman and Gizmodo's Nick Broughall. Meanwhile, News.com.au's Chloe Lake talked about online news and Seamus Byrne revealed the details of his new projects including the Midnight Update video podcast.
The final day ended with another one-on-one session before delegates made their way home after a busy but productive three days.
120 delegates attended Kickstart with more than 1,000 connections made between journalists and vendors. In addition to the 200 one-on-one interviews, the event generated more than 1,000 'tweets' and dozens of articles, a couple of which generated widespread global attention. #kickstart09 was the number two trend on Twitter on the opening day and it again trended into the top ten on the Tuesday.
MediaConnect would like to thank all of the Kickstart 2009 delegates for making the event such a success.