The conference is going to address the design of interactive systems like web and desktop applications, mobile, consumer electronics and digitally enhanced environments. Yeah!

Stars include Alan Cooper, Bill Buxton, Sigi Moeslinger and Malcolm McCullough.

I will keep on posting during my trip!

Hope to see you there.

Going has a neat design and is very easy to use, comfortable to find events and meet people with similar taste that want go to the that event. In order to check people’s taste, Going is forced to make you a lot of questions about you during the registration process, that’s not that bad, now a days people are most used to that.

Mrs. Hopfen said that she is planing to make money selling event tickets and through special features like “build your own community” and email newsletters.

One of the OMD panels

Going is focused on cities right now and is not clear (to me) if they are planing to expand the service to other regions. Mrs. Hopfen also said that for them the most important thing is to offer a site that is easy to use, specially the navigation of articles and events. It seems that Going is taking usability seriously.

Going is also making a good job integrating other services. For example, it gives the possibility to share your event on Facebook and Myspace, and has an import-friend’s-emails feature during the registration.

.

Very impressive is what they achieved with its Mixed Tape, an online community for music download that has 2.8 million users. Thanks to Mixed Tape, Mercedes, an “old economy” company, has 18% of the German music download market. Music was free, artist were applying to get into the compilations and people were discussing about it. Every compilation cover was showing a different car and the whole design was following the Mercedes brand.

Unfortunately, Mixed Tape is closed now, but Mercedes says they are preparing a new one, to be release in early 2008. The good thing is that they left the forums opened, and they ask the users for recommendations for the new versions. Well done!

Another interesting thing is the Mercedes-Benz.tv, and IPTV service performing different programmes. The over-all design of the Mercedes TV site is very good and attractive.

This was an excellent example of old-into-new-economy. Bravo Mercedes!

The first morning I have attended the Trends in Mobile Marketing talk, Case Studies presentation and the Outlook for Mobile Web 2.0. The Pixelpark AG presented the ZDFmediathek, a quasi-BBC TV player, the G+J Electronic Media Sales GmbH presented the Vodafone Live portal and the YOC AG showed its Volvo project.

From the above mentioned, the one I liked the most was the Vodafone presentation. G+J gave some general hints about Vodafone Live, a mobile portal with TV shows, music downloads and a selection of websites for news, sport, travel and shopping. They also showed us how Vodafone is making money with mobile web advertisements, proving that it is actually possible to make money with it. Click Here to check the Vodafone Live portal.

Click to enlarge
They were also showing how some brands are getting a better connection to the their customers thanks to mobile microsites. For example the Volvo microsite developed by the YOC AG, with videos, wallpapers and screensavers.

Since the OMD started in 2000, it has been growing very fast to almost 200 exhibitors. It offers a wide program around the Internet business: e-commerce, market research, in-game advertising, mobile business and more.

I will be there and will tell you all about it soon!