A sea of conferences navigated with a scorecard.

If it's Tuesday it must be time for a mobile TV communications conference. The year 2005 has been a year of conferences: some that stand alone and discuss the mobile TV or mobile entertainment markets, and others which are connected to other conferences and trade shows. But, one thing is for sure: you can't miss connecting to a cell phone conference this year. I have participated as a guest speaker at several of these--NATPE, CTIA, Mobile Entertainment Summit, NAB, and two Prepaid Telcom conferences--talking about TV-on-cellphones. Also, VideoAge reporters have attended mobile television conferences in Canada, France, Italy and the U.K.

Every session in which I was involved was busy, and there is no dearth of attendees. Clearly there is a lot of interest in short-form video for TV and websites, and bigger interest in mobile TV; and the marketplace is worldwide. So if you are looking into the mobile TV market, where should you attend? If you don't want to waste too much time or feel like you are reliving a high-school Algebra class, you have to find the conference that best fits your needs:

1. Get on the mailing lists--so you can get information emailed to you. You might just do a general Internet search for "mobile TV conferences" as a starting point.

2. Connect to sites like MoConews.com (mobile content news), which will usually list conferences.

3. Check out the subject matter being covered at that specific conference--does it pertain to your specific market and your company's focus?

4. See who will be speaking--are they potentially too technical for your needs?

5. Are there people attending with whom you can network?

6. See who is exhibiting, and whether they can provide you with any additional information.

7. What are your real objectives--do you want to enter or better exploit the business? Whom do you want to meet? For example, if it is the cell phone companies directly, you need to find out if the executives are going to be there (they don't always go to the conferences).

8. Is the conference geographically desirable?

9. CTIA is the official organization for the mobile industry; its website and perhaps its employees, are worth checking out in order to answer some questions.

In any case, content is still king in both the emerging Mobile TV market and the broadband market, therefore producers and distributors will have choices. At the trade shows or conferences, you can look to meet with executives from a major web player like Yahoo!, AOL, or MSN to get placement, if you don't want to syndicate to the websites on your own. You can look for aggregators on the Web, or major sites that can fit your needs and play to your demo--like ivillage.com if you are looking to reach women.

For cellphones, you would want to connect to the "Cellcos": Verizon, Sprint, Cingular, and T-Mobile or platform companies like Go TV, Mobi TV, Smart Video, and others, or aggregators like Mobile Media and Versaly. For TV, you will be seeing a growing interest in short- form video on broadcast, cable, and VoD. For example, Two Minute Television Network and Nextpert News are looking to license content that is already short-form, so that they can create two-minute shows and distribute them into their specific markets. Usually, they do not buy the shows, but set up a revenue-sharing arrangement with the producers or studios.