A couple weeks ago, your faithful friends at BGR brought you the news of T-Mobile’s BlackBerry Curve Breakfast Tour making it’s rounds across America. To follow up on that post, we decided to bring you an exclusive recap from one of the breakfasts.
I cannot personally vouch for the other events, but I will say that T-Mobile and RIM picked an absolutely great venue to introduce the device to the city of Atlanta (post-launch, of course) – a club now named Opera. The storied history of this venue dates back to Peter Gatien, famed owner of the Limelight nightclubs, opening up a club named Petra after moving Limelight to New York (Disco Bloodbath, Party Monster, the Club Kids, etc.) from Atlanta. It was a former 1920’s opera house, hence the recently remodeled club interior and new name (formerly eleven50). Hit the jump for the rest!
Breakfast was better than most of these events. In addition to the standard orange juice, coffee, and bagels, they also had a few different types of danishes, a mound of various fruits, and a few different types of breads. Unfortunately, the bars were dry to the audience, otherwise I would have been sipping on a Tequila Sunrise.
A representative from RIM spoke to the attendees, giving some marketing information about the BlackBerry 8320 and the UMA technology. A video was shown followed by a brief marketing spill from a T-Mobile representative. The small Vendor Showcase housed Chalk Media and my buddies at Wallace Wireless. I can speak very highly of both these vendors in each of their respective market spaces (mobile media content delivery and business continuity planning) and would definitely recommend both to anyone looking for these solutions.
T-Mobile had three booths set up across the venue – one for the BlackBerry 8320, one for the BlackBerry Pearl and it’s new colors, and one for Wi-Fi and UMA (T-Mobile’s Hot Spot @ Home). This last booth was occupied by none other than T-Mobile and VoiceStream all-star, Terence “TC” Caston. For those who have not heard of this legendary figure in the wireless arena, he has played a key role in T-Mobile’s adoption, testing and deployment of mobile devices lines, such as BlackBerry, Palm and Windows Mobile, in addition to the transport technologies, such as EDGE, UMTS, and UMA.
T-Mobile and RIM kept their presentations short and to the point, as to not venture into the realm of boredom. While you were encouraged to stay and network and learn more about the T-Mobile and ISV products, unlike other carrier launch events, you were not forced to remain at the venue for an hour (or two or three) in order to receive your free BlackBerry device. We were able to walk out within 30-45 minutes (we’re already familiar with both Chalk and Wallace Wireless) and received the new BlackBerry 8320 without any delays.
Kudos to T-Mobile for a super sharp and classy breakfast event!
