I recently came across this interesting post by Michael Thelander over at RCR Wireless in which he describes how 3GPP meetings and the people attending ‘tick’ from his point of view. Regularly attending industry meetings around the world on a quarterly meeting myself I’m glad that these meetings are a tad more relaxed in most aspects than what Michael describes in his post. I’ve heard similar stories of 3GPP meetings from other people in the past so I don’t think he’s exaggerating.
One thing he doesn’t mention is how well Internet connectivity works when hundreds of people attend such meetings. From what I’ve heard, 3GPP meeting organizers take special care to select venues with high speed Internet connectivity (and I don’t mean a DSL line with a few Mbit/s) and bring their own kit to manage the traffic. Still, I’ve heard people saying that often, Internet connectivity is a challenge during meeting weeks. Let’s see Michael’s post was titled ‘part 1’, so perhaps he’ll mention something on this in future posts.