Internet World 2010

Written by Honcho | Apr 28, 2010 4:18:44 PM

Couple of weeks here and I’m off on my first exhibition for iThinkMedia and not a bad one to start with. Internet World in Earls Court attracts over 12,000 attendees each year and it seemed this year they may have exceeded that, as it was certainly busy on the first day!

There was no real agenda to the day, except to chat to as many people as possible and see what new and exciting innovations might be out there, (and of course get as many cool freebies as possible!).The entrance is dominated by the ‘all singing and dancing’ stages, I choose those words carefully as Peer 1 Hosting actually had dancing girls on their stand! We were interested to hear as much about Social Media as possible and had ‘ear-marked’ many seminars. The first we attended in the morning was ‘How Social Media Affects Every Part of Your Business’, a speech given by Antony Mayfield of icrossing UK. Some interesting points were raised, but basically outlined the rise and rise of Social Media. i_crossing are actually up for a Webby Award with their iPhone app, which allows you to search keywords giving you results from the Social Media ‘blogosphere’ which iThinkMedia thought was great.

Antony Mayfield from icrossing UK speaking at Internet World 2010

The highly anticipated speech was – ‘How brands can engage Facebook’ a speech being delivered by Facebook’s UK Commercial Director, Stephen Haines. However, the main theme of the day was queing and this seminar was never going to be an exception – an hour of queing and still we did not get into the room as the seats had predominantly gone to Press and VIP’s! But we were assured all the speeches from Internet World will be available at www.seminarstreams.com within seven days so iThinkMedia will have to view it then.

‘The usual’ queing at Internet World 2010

Throughout the day we did manage to speak to some very interesting companies. iThinkMedia are looking at a few different avenues to develop our offerings and had a few topics that we wanted to get some information on. One of those subjects was video content for our website and those of our clients. We spoke with Alex Kemsley from Pixserve Limted, a video production company that can deliver that media by overlaying your web content using something they call The Weblette. It looked impressive and seemed to work well, with Alex offering competitive pricing as they are a new company to the industry.

iPhone apps were the talk of Internet World and something iThinkMedia are getting increasingly involved with, so it was great to see so many companies offering solutions. One such company was insidemobile. We spoke with James Shepherd about some of the companies they have been working with and the rapid growth they have seen in the demand for these apps. Insidemobile offer consultancy, production and implementation of iPhone apps, as well as Android, Blackberry and more mobile solutions. Whether you have an app in mind or just know you need one, James said they can accommodate any situation.

iThinkMedia also managed to speak with the guys at Rackspace about their dedicated hosting solution. Rackspace was actually the first company you were made aware of at Internet World as they had their sales team outside Earls Court with plackards and banners shouting ‘No more servers!’. It certainly got people’s attention as they seemed inundated with people! But we managed to speak with them about our upcoming move to different offices and the solutions they could provide. Cloud hosting was something we had not thought about before so was definitely an interesting option, whilst we also discussed the ‘100% network uptime guarnateed’ service from their dedicated hosting.

There were plenty of hosting solutions at Internet World with one catching everyone’s attention: UK Fast. With one look at their stand you can tell why!

Internet World definitely left me buzzing with ideas and in need of researching more areas that iThinkMedia might be able to develop further expertise in. But one things for sure, Internet World will continue to grow as it provides such high quality exhibitors and strives to be innovative with it’s offerings for the Digital professional.

What were your thoughts on Internet World 2010? Was there anything you feel they could improve on or were missing? And importantly, will you be attending next year?

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