Antony Bruno is a man of his word.
The Executive Director of Billboard's Digital/Mobile Conferences took a gamble last fall with a free-form, no-holds-barred panel at the semi-annual CTIA convention (a mainstay for us folks at Airborne). The result was a blast (see re-cap here), and I wondered aloud if he--and his parent company--would have the guts to continue this type of programming.
Well, link away to the agenda of next month's Billboard Mobile Entertainment Live! event and see that the hits just keep on coming. Well, at least on the panel discussion that I'm moderating at the event later this month.
The panel is called "Creative Conundrum: What Sucks and How Do We Fix It?" and its objective is not just to speak aloud all the things we folks in the mobile media industry say in the privacy of hallways and on the phones, but to make the poor drones in the audience pick up their eyes from their laptops and Blackberries and pay attention for a change.
Joining me will be:
Russ Cox of Turner Broadcasting/The Cartoon Network
Jeremiah Zimm of MTV
Rob McDermott, manager of Linkin Park
and former Fox Mobile President Lucy Hood
All have been instructed to yell, scream, interrupt and make their points loudly. This ain't no kiss-ass, agree-with-everyone-to-be-polite benign industry panel.
The bar has been set high, and I hope we pull it off. But at least the inspiration is there at the start--when was the last time you went to an industry conference session with the word "Sucks" in the title, not just in the evaluation?