Kellogg Technology Conference 2007

I went to a great conference this morning that Kellogg put on, the theme of which was “The Digital Lifestyle.” The keynote speakers were Robert Dotson, CEO of T-Mobile; Marissa Mayer, VP of stuff at Google; and Kevin Johnson, Co-President of Platforms & Services at Microsoft. I had to leave before Mr. Johnson’s speech, but he clearly has the best title. “Co-President” is pretty great.

Dotson’s talk was very interesting. He has had a bizarre career trajectory: Kellogg ‘89, marketing for PepsiCo, Senior Director of Marketing KFC (not a typo – KFC as in Kentucky Fried Chicken), VP Marketing for Western Wireless, Executive VP Sales and Marketing T-Mobile, COO T-Mobile, President T-Mobile USA, CEO T-Mobile USA. He actually made a great argument that selling cell phones was very much like selling chicken. He also said that he sees no need for GPS in phones, he doesn’t think video or music in phones will go anywhere, and has no enterprise focus. Although his arguments for these positions were pretty weak, I don’t really want video or music on my phone, so maybe he’s on to something. I do, however, think GPS and maps have huge potential.

Mayer’s speech was very good as well. She gave a good 10,000 foot view of Google (literal and physical) and dug deep on a few interesting areas of Google, focusing, interestingly, on getting more offline data online. She was also extremely strong in the Q&A and took 15 – 20 tough questions. I was able to sneak one in and asked her how much data she thinks they have indexed to date – she said 500 terabytes…more on this in another post.

Kellogg is a nice, btw. They have aeron chairs, branded bottled water, and a pretty great view. Hats off for putting on a great event!