Serendipity
Trade shows are strange things. You spend most of your time rushing from one appointment to another, wondering when you'll have the time to write-up what you've discovered. But every now and then completely unforeseen opportunities present themselves.
On the morning of the first full day of CES 2010, I'd just finished filming at the Lenovo showcase in the Venetian hotel and, together with the rest of the world, was waiting to catch a cab to NVIDIA's press event (I was late, it was full up). I got chatting to a chap with an English accent in the taxi queue and it turned out to be Microsoft's top marketing exec in Europe.
During our brief conversation we exchanged cards and within a couple of weeks we met at Microsoft's offices in Victoria, all thanks to a chance encounter in a taxi queue.
Alex Payne (pictured below, talking to me) is Microsoft's EMEA chief marketing office for consumer products. At CES Microsoft did a lot of teasing about what it was going to announce at Mobile World Congress next month so I started by asking Payne if he agrees that Microsoft is under pressure to deliver something big.
"If we just take a step back; in the last few years we've redoubled our efforts in terms of listening to customers and what they want, and that's brought a new level of innovation to the things we've done. So Windows 7 was the world's biggest beta, and there was a radically different approach to Bing in terms of analysing how people search," said Payne.
"In terms of mobile, Mobile World Congress will hopefully answer quite a few of your questions. There's clearly a big opportunity around mobile itself, but from our perspective we try to look at the broader opportunity that exists there."
