We are on our way to New York for the EngageExpo, a trade show for kids products, ranging from internet based games, social worlds and real physical toys – yes they still exist and we hopefully have some time to play. In addition to realising a childhood dream of attending the biggest kids trade show in the world, we are presenting our direct marketing and ingame alert solutions – allowing business to engage with their demanding kids customers on THEIR channels. Kids just don’t use email anymore and businesses are slowly starting realise that. Comufy helps these business to message kids and teens easily on social networks and instant messengers. Twitter is also an options, but kids don’t seem to use it much yet.

During our stay we are also looking forward to meeting a few NY startups, i.e. Ray Bernaz from Socialibrium who was very helpful already putting us in touch with the NY tech scene and Graham Lawlor who has invited us to attend a ultralight startups event next Tuesday.

Enough about Comufy and why we are going to New York… More about the actual travel experience so far.

Thanks to UKTI, who have been great help all round so far, and British Airways, who have sponsored this flight as part of a program helping UK entrepreneurs go beyond the island. Virgin is no longer THE airline for entrepreneurs.

The experience on BA 0003 (yes that’s right one of THE Concord flight numbers – but unfortunately arrive before you leave is no more) has so far been very pleasant. Simple checkin, hardly any queues and very friendly cabin crew. Even the meal was tasty and warm Just had a quick chat with Gavin, the captain – nice personal touch I must say.

The only thing that has been missing was the quick cup of tea once things got moving. (Update) I nearly complained about not getting cheese and biscuits plus a desert, but Michelle the friendly flight attendant just brought me some extra cheese (If anyone from BA reads this: I am on BA0003 10.2.10, she deserves a promotion and promised not to strike).

Now a few more emails to confirm some meetings, a quick movie and maybe a power nap.

Update, the OnAir insight mobile phone system doesn’t let me connect to the Internet through T-Mobile – so this will be posted when we touch down. Even if they would let me connect, they probably would charge me an arm and a leg. Why didn’t BA just install inflight Wifi instead of an inflight mobile network that doesn’t let you receive calls and charges 1£ per SMS?

Looking forward to the Expo and to meeting our US startup buddies.

Phil

Tags: Engage, Engage! Expo, Expo, New York

This entry was posted on Friday, February 12th, 2010 at 12:29 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.