Filed under: Internet Tools, iPhone
The ultimate tech conference giveaway: an iPhone
Technology conferences are fine places to pick up vendor swag and free gifts -- after all, if you're going to travel across the country or across the ocean, a little token of appreciation is certainly in order -- but the web productivity and collaboration Office 2.0 Conference, starting this Wednesday, has taken the notion to a delightful extreme.
Every paying attendee to San Francisco-based O2con (press and bloggers are not included, darn it) will receive an iPhone 4GB model along with the $1500+ conference ticket; the iPhone will be used to manage conference contacts, schedule meetings with other participants, view schedules, chat & tag photos, and generally serve as a guide to the event. This grand experiment will result in a gaggle of more than 500 simultaneous iPhone users in the same place, on the same WiFi network. The conference app will be running on the Etelos web engine/CRM platform, seen here (bonus points to Etelos for captioning the screenshots in Comic Life, very nice touch).
As you might expect, some attendees would prefer an 8GB iPhone; they can upgrade for a mere $115. Those already packing an iPhone can change their free gift to a Playstation 3 running Linux (really, just as nice). Conference attendees who have received their iPhones are posting their impressions, raves and gripes (including a bout of domestic strife when two teenage girls became outraged that their mother had an iPhone before they did) on the O2con discussion boards.
If you're attending O2con, let us know how it goes and whether you're enjoying your "free" iPhone.
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Ty Dibble said 7:15AM on 9-04-2007
this may be your last chance to make me a winner...
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Justin said 7:24AM on 9-04-2007
Heh, I think people just see the word giveaway and jump at posting. I think someone should do a post with the word giveaway in the topic and the body explaining that each poster below agrees to clean up the TUAW offices for a week.
Anyway, the iphone really isn't "free" as it is included in that fairly steep conference fee.
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Shannin said 11:28AM on 9-04-2007
actually i think that price is cheap since many confrences (even some of apples) cost well over that
but i would still rather pay $600 for my phone
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Sam H said 12:26PM on 9-04-2007
But... what happens if the attendee doesn't want to activate AT&T service?
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Michael Rose said 12:31PM on 9-04-2007
#4 -- excellent question Sam. Some of the international conference attendees are asking the same. I imagine they could use Erica's pay-as-you-go approach.
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PSM said 4:32PM on 9-04-2007
Can't you just use it as a wi-fi device, using one of those hacks to bypass the AT&T account registration?
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Sam H said 6:05PM on 9-04-2007
in theory, yes... but it doesn't seem right for a conference to give people a device they have to either pay for or hack in order to access necessary information...
i mean, don't get me wrong, it's very nice to give away iphones, but it doesn't seem all that well thought through...
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