The travel technology ‘Gong Show’
November 26, 2009 |
TravelWeekly's Arnie Weissmann on PhoCusWright's Innovation Summit and how the presentations of new travel technology probably say more about our current economic times than they do about the state of online entrepreneurial creativity.
Thirty-six presenters paid $10,000 each to demonstrate their Web-based travel products. The 36 were selected by PhoCusWright from a larger pool of applicants, but the real jury was the audience, who used handheld electronic devices to indicate how they felt about a product. The scale ranged from "exciting as watching paint dry" to "the next TripAdvisor or Google."
Although the summit portion of the conference was positioned as travel technology's "American Idol," it sometimes felt more like "The Gong Show." The metaphorical gong that could eliminate aspiring entrepreneurs, however, was heard not during the presentations but in candid, informal critiques during coffee breaks.
While most people seemed to have a favorite or two, the consensus was best summed up by Mims Wright, a senior adviser for the investment bank Bentley Associates: "These were not big technology ideas."
Get the full story at TravelWeekly
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