After attending numerous press events at NAB this year, Denise Haskew has finally learnt how to talk fluent marketese. Here she relays her experiences in her new-found tongue.

Article first published: May/June 2008

The journey to NAB took longer than anticipated this year due to a malfunction in the scheduling device at the intercontinental customer processing entrance/exit portal solution, making us late for the complete end-to-end aeronautic personnel vehicular transportation solution. Once aboard, and after the passing of a number of temporal segment division solutions, my associate and I deplaned and awaited the arrival of our mobile personal content encasement solutions from the circulatory mobile content encasement solutions retrieval solution at the Las Vegas intercontinental customer processing entrance/exit portal. Solution.

Once again, we had to line up and await a livery drivered turbo-combustive metrically chargeable customer vehicular transportational conveyance solution. But no sooner had we said it than one appeared. The livery drivered turbo-combustive metrically chargeable customer vehicular transportational conveyance solution conveyed us to our multi-chambered basic amenity-equipped temporary dorming and abluting habitation solution, where we stored our mobile personal content encasement solutions, took advantage of the localized directional precipitation solution, and headed out to get ratted with a bunch of journalist solutions.

Day two

Suffering slightly from temporary global repositioning timezone maladjustment syndrome, coupled with excessive imbibication dehydration misfunction disorder, we tucked into a hearty breakfast. We then headed to the Las Vegas Convention Center for the start of a busy day of ligger-attended tier-seating manufacturer presentation crepuscular sleep depravation solutions. Following this we headed to the first of many noise-excessive-podium-dancing-tacky-bits-jiggling-in-the-face-gratuitous-cabaret-turn-the- bleeding-music-down-stop-dancing-on-the-bar-and-get-me-a-sodding-drink-type-party-solutions.

Day three

Off to the Convention Center again for the first official day of the show, and boy, were there a lot of problem solutions there. Some of them were flexible, many of them were interoperable, lots and lots of them were convergent, but absolutely all of them were leading. We were particularly interested in solutions that involved IPTV, P2P, B2C, B2B, B&B, C&A, DOA, CIA, R2D2, C3PO, ETC.

Day four

This evening we attended and part-hosted an outdoor entertainment and social interaction solution, joined by several content acquisition solution providers as well as several content acquisition provider solutions. Most welcome, of course, were the international beer and pizza solutions.

Day five

Oh sod it, I’m bored of this now. You’re OK. You don’t have to read this garbage, day-in, day-out. Honestly, I received a press release recently that included the following passage, “… the framework integrates content processing solutions, content management systems and their interoperability, workflow, and adopts new methods and tools for innovative, flexible and interoperable DRM and harmonise B2B and B2C areas for DRM. It brings the DRM model into the B2B area and increases content accessibility with P2P legal platforms for B2B and B2C levels. The Framework includes content tools for MPEG-21 authoring, and players for PC, PDA, STB, PVR, HDR, mobiles, etc.”

(Yes, you know who you are.)

But get that final word: “etc”. Even the press release writer got bored and couldn’t go on. I’m not surprised; I’d lost the will to live by the third line. Now, who started all this nonsense? Who was the first person who thought it was a good idea to call a “sandwich” a “sandwich solution”? Whoever thought the word “content” was endowed with enough glory to convey the rich visual treasury of film and television opuses that creative people in the industry beget on a daily basis? And who thought “NAB – where content comes to life” made any sense logically, literally or philosophically? It doesn’t even work as a metaphor! Its monstrous claim is that every movie you’ve ever seen is either dead, as yet unborn or in some quasi-undead state until the moment it is displayed at NAB, at which time it is miraculously resurrected, Lazarus-like, amid a lightning storm of turgid grammar.

Don’t you just wish sometimes that they’d bring back that human life extinguishing knotted rope solution?

Denise Haskew After 10 years as a television commissioning editor, Denise decided she needed a more intellectual challenge, so she gave it up to become a model. She has done all sorts of useless jobs, such as magazine publishing and PR. She plans to be on the first big spaceship to leave the Earth, alongside all the telephone sanitizers.