Don't let bad technology ruin a good message
Tags: Intel, WiMax, Mobility, Dual Core, Marketing
This afternoon, I saw the second keynote of IDF with Sean Maloney and David Perlmutter talking about the magic of mobility with Intel dual-core architectures and WiMax. At one point, one Intel exec took the audience on a trip to the four corners of the world, with videoconferences to a small city in China, a canal barge in Rotterdam, to a school in Argentina, and to a lakeside house in Canada, all courtesy of WiMax broadband. Great demos for a great keynote, right?
Well, er, not really. The concept was terrific -- show WiMax actually being used to provide wireless broadband. But the videoconferencing was terrible. Round-trip delays were on the order of many seconds, meaning that these live videoconferences became opportunities for miscommunication and confusion. At one point, for example, the vice mayor of a Chinese city spoke for about five minutes in Chinese with no translation. The audience was left wondering whether they were missing subtitles or some other bit of information that would help them understand. Similarly, when the interview with the ship captain in Rotterdam had ended here in San Francisco, the ship captain in Rotterdam couldn't really see or hear what was happening. So he remained on the screen looking puzzled and confused for a couple of minutes in living color, destroying the value of what should have been a very impressive demonstration.
The bottom line: This could have been a great keynote. But someone opted for demonstrating it badly, figuring that the wireless communication would wow the audience. In fact, it was the opposite. The audience ignored the important bits -- namely that WiMAx was actually delivering wireless broadband in remote corners of the world -- and instead focused on something that wasn't even the point of the demonstration, namely the videoconferencing technology. The result: the keynote went from being a wow to a "How's your Chinese?" moment. And that's not what Intel marketing was looking for.
This afternoon, I saw the second keynote of IDF with Sean Maloney and David Perlmutter talking about the magic of mobility with Intel dual-core architectures and WiMax. At one point, one Intel exec took the audience on a trip to the four corners of the world, with videoconferences to a small city in China, a canal barge in Rotterdam, to a school in Argentina, and to a lakeside house in Canada, all courtesy of WiMax broadband. Great demos for a great keynote, right?
Well, er, not really. The concept was terrific -- show WiMax actually being used to provide wireless broadband. But the videoconferencing was terrible. Round-trip delays were on the order of many seconds, meaning that these live videoconferences became opportunities for miscommunication and confusion. At one point, for example, the vice mayor of a Chinese city spoke for about five minutes in Chinese with no translation. The audience was left wondering whether they were missing subtitles or some other bit of information that would help them understand. Similarly, when the interview with the ship captain in Rotterdam had ended here in San Francisco, the ship captain in Rotterdam couldn't really see or hear what was happening. So he remained on the screen looking puzzled and confused for a couple of minutes in living color, destroying the value of what should have been a very impressive demonstration.
The bottom line: This could have been a great keynote. But someone opted for demonstrating it badly, figuring that the wireless communication would wow the audience. In fact, it was the opposite. The audience ignored the important bits -- namely that WiMAx was actually delivering wireless broadband in remote corners of the world -- and instead focused on something that wasn't even the point of the demonstration, namely the videoconferencing technology. The result: the keynote went from being a wow to a "How's your Chinese?" moment. And that's not what Intel marketing was looking for.
posted by Carl Howe at
7:09 PM
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