Predictions

The Unlimited Potential function was a lot of fun. Around 60 people there and the five of us all made our predictions. I was first up and my predictions were:

* The big hit of 2007 will be the device which combines mobile broadband, Google Earth, and GPS

* NZ will have its first spam murder: A spammer will be outed by John Campbell, and then be found dead a few days later

* Telecom CFO Marco Bogoievski will be come the Chief Executive Officer, but despite this Xtra will drop below 50% market share for the first time. Vodaphone will be on target to become the biggest telco by 2010

* Peter Jackson will win US $290 million off New Line Cinema, but no studio will then want to work with him. Bored, he stands for and becomes Mayor of Wellington.

In the straw vote only two brave people went along with my predictions. The predictions which got the most support were from Mauricio Freitas of Geekzone. They were:

* Telecom CEO Theresa Gattung will leave the company by May 2007

* Econet Wireless will not deliver the third cellular network in New Zealand, again, in 2007.
It may actually fold, leaving investors with nothing

* Windows Vista released after 5 years of development: it is full of eye candy and some real new features. However, it will fail to get into small and medium businesses this year, and unlike Windows 95 companies will not be pressured by employees to migrate to this new OS

* The MSM won’t get blogs. But they will keep trying by renaming their columnists as “bloggers”.

* The Queen will abdicate in July 2007

The last one was regarded as very ballsy.

There’s several reports on the night online. You can check out what Tom Beard said, Hamish MacEwan, Mauricio Freitas
Ken Lewis, and Jason Dykes.

Hopefully UP will get us all back at the end of the year to see who really won! 🙂