An industry that has yet to hit
its stride was being discussed and celebrated on Wednesday, September
5th. About 120 people showed up to hear a panel on iTV. Digital Media
Wire co-founder and CEO Ned Sherman was out from California helping to
promote the event with the help of New York's own iLounge. When I
caught up with him after then main event at the stylish lounge, Virot,
he was helping panel-member Tim Larcombe, the regional president of
Agency.com, up at the bar. The reception followed what both described as
a successful discussion. Lydia Loizides, an analyst at Jupiter Media
Metrix was also there at Verizon, where the panel discussion took place.
She said that the biggest problems facing the industry is the same as
in most emerging industries: standards. "A lot of demand is being places
on the programmers right now," she said, as some unidentified gentleman
retrieved us a drink so that we could talk shop.
Eric Ashman, a tech consultant who was a co-founder of USWeb likened iTV
today to what the Internet was in 1990. "There were companies out there
doing research, but they were not making any money. That's kind of the
same picture that we have today." Other attendees who were also in
attendance to hear other's perspectives were The FeedRoom's VP & GM
Robertson Barrett and Excite@Home's Affiliate Operations director Andi
Zuckerman.
Chip Lewis, who is heading up the Metro Channels video-on-demand
deployment felt the panel was interesting, but could've been better. New
Jersey-based Preferred Data's CEO Brian Rice and Customer Relations VP
David Young thought this was the best iLounge they'd been at thus far.
Schneider Shapiro's Scott Shapiro compared the ITV industry today to the
way Silicon Alley was in 1995 with all the experimentation that went
on.
Cybergold's strategic accounts Director Brad Barton has been speaking
about ITV since 1988 and still had a lot to say. He spoke at length to
me while I managed to obtain business cards of Computer Savers Inc.'s
COO Marc Katz and Asset Development Corporation's marketing VP John
Dunmar. They also felt the panel was "good." Solbright's Arthur McKinley
and I chatted for a while. Xportical's COO Jeffrey Erb, who was in from
Philly, re-introduced me to the president of "Philly's best PR
firm"-Garfield Group's Gretchen Roede and one of her SAE's-- Paul
Alfieri. Uber geekette-around-town, Jen Runne, came up to me to tell me
her perspective on the evening's topic and her hot-spot choices for the
remainder of the evening. She predicts it will be six years before ITV
is profitable.
A chronicle of the people and events in technology, internet and media since 1997, mixed in with snapshots of musings and observations.
