I went to Internet world in Earls Court today.

Put it this way. There were lots of servers and lots of vendors of content management software. (Someone should tell them about Open Source and blogging).

But the real buzz was around the New Media Marketing Seminar Tent. Everyone seems to have realised they have no idea what to do, now they actually have the servers and the web site and the CMS etc. I mean, how do we get onto Google for fuck’s sake?

Which rather gives the lie to the whole Internet World ‘show’ business model.

What people actually want is a media and marketing conference about the Web. But those sectors seem to be largely dominated by the NMA’s and Revolutions who are more interested in Nike’s latest ad campaign.

Take for instance Simon Walman’s speech to a motley crew of consultants: http://www.netimperative.com/2005/06/16/waldman

(I will clean up the html later, ok?)

This would have been great at a marketing conference. But it wasn’t AT a marketing conference.

By contrast, the difference with the mobile event around the corner was utterly palpable.

Mobile Entertainment Markets 05 was totally buzzing. Loads more activity than Internet World.

Here, however, you could almost taste the whiff of “mistakes made during the dotcom bubble and about to be repeated in the mobile world”.

For instance, I heard two presentations from people saying brands would ‘disintermediate’ media owners and retailers. Fuck off!

Because Nike.com is the new Google, right?! Because Tango is bigger than Amazon, huh?

As a friend of mine said recently, “It’s like 1997 all over again in the mobile space right now, and they haven’t got a clue.”