This report is from the NCTA show where we had a massive booth and exhibit. It is also noteworthy because we had to hold a “press conference” primarily to announce our new platform release, but the reporters were there mainly focused on last month’s incident involving the arrest of our CEO. All in all quite a stressful time, but we all came through with flying colors. Please read on.
From: Ramon Chen
Sent: Tuesday, June 12, 2001 12:39 AM
To: *All MetaTV
Subject: Capt. Midnight: You guys are everywhere! – NCTA 2001 Day One!
Apologies for not sending a Capt. Midnight last night but there was still much preparation to be done for the opening day at NCTA. Unfortunately for you, there is such an incredible amount to tell you, that I think I’m going to break all records for the length of a Capt. Midnight report. Please get cups of coffee or stretch your legs in between reading this report.
The booth was looking good but there were a few minor hiccups, typical on any expo booth of this size.
By now you will have seen the information/tarot/baseball cards on our web site which link to tours. These cards really caused some blood sweat and well nearly tears of frustration on Sunday. You’ll notice that the tour for the TV Network (which is the Starz card) on our web site there is a copyright notice linked. Well on Thurs end of day last week, we were told by Starz lawyers that we weren’t allowed to use the images on the card and therefore they would not let us hand them out! The only way they would agree is if we could somehow get creative and place a sticker with all of the copyright messages on it on the card! Since the TV Network card was part of our “set” for our cohesive marketing branding strategy for NCTA, we decided to go for it. How hard could it be? There were over 2500 cards!
As it turned out, we had the stickers created on Friday. John B hand picked them up on Saturday morning to carry on the plane with us to Chicago. Unfortunately they were inconsistent in size and cut. So not only did we have to sticker them, we also had to cut some of them down to the right size! What a nightmare, but with the help of Ruth, Korey, Peter, Jim, Sarah, John B, Greg T, Jeff K, Joel and David D, this team set about the task of trimming and labeling the cards. We were not going to be deterred, so for 2 straight hours, the assembly line stickered away. In the end, we managed to sticker over 1500 cards! The other 1000? Hey we stickered them all, some of the stickers must have fallen off (that’s our story and we are stickin to it – no pun intended). For me, the extra effort that was put in really symbolizes what everyone at MetaTV is all about. If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right! Special thanks to Joel and David D for allowing themselves to be suckered, I mean stickered in to helping. Seriously, thanks for helping us with manual labor, now they know marketing is definitely not a glamorous profession!
The cards are turning out to be a big hit. We are giving them out to people watching the theater presentation (more about that later) as well as using them to explain MetaTV’s value proposition and target audiences. Halfway through the stickering session, Sarah and Peter headed off to Kinkos. Although we had shipped collateral, we had created fresh new case studies for TMS and Worldspan. In addition, we had 3 new press releases that needed to be printed off. In the end, they copied over 1200 press releases for handing out at the booth and in the press kits, new corporate backgrounders and executive bios. Over 400 existing Ford, 700 new TMS and 800 new Worldspan color copies (which Worldspan agreed to pay half!) and Sarah even spent the time to haggle with the Kinko’s copy guy to get the per unit cost down (now that’s P2P!). These materials would be transported to the booth via taxi in two separate runs that night and later in the morning. Meanwhile back at the booth, Jeff K was hunting down DVD players. Purchasing a set not once, but twice (we will be returning the first set). Dealing with problems with incompatibility with some players to display recorded DVDs. Everyone was wiring feverishly, handling overheating boxes, drilling holes, relocating fans to cool the boxes down.
There is so much more that I don’t even know about during the prep on Saturday and Sunday, but I’ll now turn the report over to what happened on day one at NCTA in Chicago? … The day started off at midnight Sunday night when all of the press releases, tours, case studies and e-mail blasts were sent/posted to our web site. This morning around 5:00am, additional content was posted to ensure that screen shots were available for any reporters or potential customers visiting the site. The press releases themselves went across the PRnewswire at 9:30am and a few of us gathered in Andrew L’s hotel room to prepare for the upcoming press conference. While we were rehearsing for the press conference, the booth was busily being set up for an 11:00am debut. Unfortunately, since I was not able to be at the booth until 10:45am, I missed the last minute preparations there. All I can tell you though is that when I walked up to the booth, it looked magnificent!
There are times in life you get that lump in your throat, and that all choked up feeling. I have certainly experienced that more times this past week than ever due to the overwhelming support of everyone at MetaTV. It was like all of the hard work, the pulling together, the demos, the marketing pieces, the business relationships, the scheduling, the event management, the engineering of all our great products all culminated into this single elegant booth which represented the heart and souls of everyone at MetaTV! It is an incredible sight and one that is doing us proud.
Meanwhile back in the hotel, at our suite, we were also hosting Liberate sales folks, solidifying our relationship with them still further. Our suite is for overflow meetings and meetings out of booth hours. There was a relatively light schedule for Monday but tomorrow activities and meetings will be picking up in all locations.
As I went down in the elevator from our press preparations, I bumped into Gary Arlen (Arlen communications, an analyst who writes the occasional article and certainly a person who is well connected in the industry). He recognized me and this is basically what he told me “….. I just want to tell you that the word out in the community is that MetaTV has handled this “situation” with incredible class and dignity. Everyone I have spoken to has mentioned how well you all have done during this time. Not only has it been business as usual, I’ve heard that in some cases you guys have actually stepped up the effort. In fact, I was speaking to some of the S.A guys and I mentioned the “situation” and they all strongly came back at me and said, “Why are you even mentioning that! As far as S.A is concerned it is a total non-issue!”
I thought you all should hear that as it was echoed repeatedly throughout day one at the show. In fact, we have received a lot of kudos for being at the show and in such a big way. The focus is definitely on our technology and on our incredible people representing us.
The booth was humming! Some highlights include just a torrid amount of demos done by Tyson, Donell, Eric, Linda, Michelle B, Darrell, Jim, Maikanh, Peter, Olga, David B with Diane and Jeff at reception. With Craig, Matt, David D, John C, Tom Conlee all constantly checking the equipment and connections (by the way, I can’t tell you how honored I am to be working with a VP of Engineering and friend in John Carney who leads by example and totally rolls up his sleeves to plug in and configure equipment, cut coax, wire together servers. Everyone pitches in, and John C was cranking as hard as anyone to get the booth ready in time).
Meanwhile at various partner booths …. at the Liberate Booth, Sarah, with backup from Greg T and Kyo manned our partner pod there. With Korey at the Microsoft booth backed up also by Michelle. William, and Linda at Scientific Atlanta’s pod where we were showing our Zap2It app, with Darrell coming back to the main booth. Ruth and David D at the PowerTV booth, again showing Zap2IT as well as at OpenTV, again showing Zap2IT. Finally, John B and David B, running back and forth between BigBand to try and help them with issues. It’s impossible to capture in words what the efforts of everyone have meant on day one. We had some big time names coming through the booth, with Comcast, QVC, HBO, Cablevision, partners such as Chyron, additional companies from Korea, and many many more that I wasn’t privy to. Both conference rooms were scheduled to the max and packed with meetings. There were some incredible relationships established and to a person they walked away impressed with our demos, technology and experience. Sales (Marj, Irv, Andrew S), Biz Dev (Terry, Peter A, Chris B, Greg K, John E), Bernard, Ty, Greg T, Kyo were talking up a storm in the conference rooms, around the booth. The air was filled with electrifying discussions. You will no doubt start to hear about some of these incredible successes as we gather our information and see what we have done day one. (FOOTNOTE: Meanwhile the Motorola, Worldspan, WorldGate, Scripps Network booths were also all featuring some MetaTV application or DVD which they were manning. In fact the first 4 booths as you walked into the exhibit entrance hall had MetaTV stuff running in them. The total number of booths (including our own) that had MetaTV applications/technology or demos were …. <drum roll> a staggering 12! Even more amazing is that number actually did not include a few “rogue” demos that were blatantly MetaTV applications but we weren’t given credit for (rest assured we are fixing that problem).
Our reception area was flawlessly manned by both Diane and Jeff K, with the occasional run for various equipment and even lunches. With Peter C dragged away to support the press conference, Jim went solo on the theater presentation for a while and did a great job, playing to standing room only on occasion. Even the casual tire kickers got a taste of the “right MetaTV stuff”. Meanwhile Peter was working with MSR (Mary and Michelle) to put together the <dum dum dum! – Dramatic music> press conference.
The press conference. We had around 15-20 people in a very large room. Andrew L set the tone by stating up front that we knew that everyone was aware of the past weeks events and that we had not come to talk about that, but to talk about our great new product announcement as well as 2 new customer wins (we later found out that we scored big points for addressing the issue up front). In between, I did a demo that focused on the Ford virtual channel on the prototype DVD. The press conference was meticulously mastered with 50 pre-made press kits put together by Peter C and help from Diane and others the night before. Our MetaTV sign was posted on the podia where Andrew was speaking. (Very Presidential seal like). We had gone through every conceivable Q&A and were asked questions like: cable rollouts and how they might affect us. What we were seeing in the marketplace. These questions were being posed by some of the leading industry reporters in our space who were in force at our press conference (Cable World, Cablevision magazine, Multi-channel news, they were all there). Finally, we did get the inevitable questions about our circumstances of the past week. Andrew handled them with poise and gave an honest accurate account of how we all felt. He reiterated how we have all pulled together for ourselves and for the company and how we are all moving forward. The press conference closed with additional follow-up one-on-one meetings with press and analysts and we were able to officially declare the press conference a great success. We handled all that was thrown at us and we continued to show that our technology was setting the standard for others to follow. Our hours of additional prep continue to pay off with MSR communications leading the way once again. Energized by our success, we continued to take meetings with various press and analysts throughout the day at our booth. The NCTA conference cameras came by more than once to film our booth and the crowds there. TechTV even came by and paid us a visit, filming and asking questions about our compact portal demo! The reporter was even heard saying, “So this is the MetaTV booth … wow it’s a lot more crowded than the other booths!”
Truthfully though, we did not have huge traffic flowing through the booth at all times. It was sporadic and certainly some of the major network booths were located further north, with their fancy giveaways, there certainly were more crowds. But as John E pointed out, most of the people that came by were really interested in our technology and very very qualified. That is all that we could hope for; attracting the interested parties that will translate into business for us is our number one goal.
As the show came to a close of Friday, many weary demoers made their way triumphantly back to our hotel but a small group remained back to execute the “e-mail blast” campaign which I eluded to in my last Hot News Alert about the tour. Sarah H, Diane and Jeff K were responsible for the e-mail blast and had an incredible number of business cards to enter into a spreadsheet that would form the list of e-mails that we would target that night. There apparently were glitches but Pete Huddleston back at home base came to the rescue and they were sent out. This is yet another incredible extra effort that makes MetaTV look so good, projecting an image of a company that executes flawlessly (no matter what it ended up taking) which in turn gives potential prospects that level of confidence to do business with us. We sweat all of the details and that’s why we will always succeed and be the very best at what we do.
Our booth came through day one like a trooper. Maintaining its poise and elegance amidst a flurry of deal making. Our video wall caught a tremendous break when a resting area was set up right behind our booth with our DVD loop video playing to any and all folks that were sitting down to take a break.
Another big highlight day one was the appearance of Communications Technology Magazine where our screen shots of E! Online graced the cover and the article (previously posted in a Hot News Alert last week) continued to feature our elegant designs as well as mentioning us prominently. This was all arranged by MSR getting us the interview and the issue was among the free magazines picked up by the thousands of attendees.
Well, that’s a wrap; I could go on until the Sun came up (but then it wouldn’t be a Capt. Midnight). Also I’m sure that I’ve missed all the other action that will come out through anecdotes of NCTA as we move into day two. I’m also sure that I’ve probably missed out a few folks (totally unintentionally) and/or lacked specific accuracy around many of the events I mentioned. But hey it’s a Capt. Midnight, no poetry this time (well maybe at the end), just a fire hose of facts that hopefully gave you a taste of what went on during day one.
To close, I just want to say that Jeff K and Craig have been their usual incredible selves, Jeff K has masterminded the entire show logistics, his preparedness and adaptiveness under incredible pressure is an inspiration to me. I don’t know how he did it with all that was going on last week, but here we are and I also don’t know how Craig, Matt (the VOD DVD is the envy of all that have seen it – Quote from VP of Marketing at WorldGate “We are having some serious technical problems over at our booth, we should have done what you guys did, have a cool looking DVD as well as great demos), Tom Conlee and everyone put together the equipment for over 15 demos at our booth and partner booths as well as the audio visual for the video wall and theater presentations. Finally, to everyone back home, thank you for all of the demos you painstakingly put together for this show. They are just amazing and we are so proud to be showing them to the rest of the World.
MetaTV is at NCTA, make no mistake. Please go to magellan/public/ncta photos to see some of the latest photos of our booth and our partner pods.
To close out day one, MetaTV is proud and loud.
Making noise everywhere, causing visitors to our partner and our main booth to stop and stare.
They tell us over here and over there “I can’t believe it, you guys are everywhere!”
Stay tuned for day two …
The Capt.