This past week, I had the pleasure of attending the UBS Global Media & Communications Conference ("Media Week"). You can find my coverage of it over at paidContent. I've never been to Fashion Week, but I imagine it's pretty similar -- expensive suits, lunchtime keynote addresses from major industry moguls, PowerPoint presentations, and lots of questions about target leverage ratios, EBITDA, and share buybacks. The one difference: I think they might have after-parties during fashion week. Unless I was kept out of the loop, I don't think there were any after-parties (6:00 PM - 9:00 PM) at the NYT building, which is probably for the best.
Anyway, I'll let you in on the #1 topic of conversation during the three-day event, and I swear this is not a joke: Guitar Hero, the videogame. I kid you not, I heard more conversations among bankers about it (when they're going to get it for their kids, when they're going to get it from Amazon, etc.) than anything else. Maybe even anything else combined. I'd say the next most popular discussion item was Sam Zell's Tribune buyout, which I heard discussed all of two times in the hallway.
And in the spirit of full disclosure, I'll mention that I have a trivially small investment in Activision, the parent company of the game's maker. It doesn't fit into my investment style in the slightest, but I thought I'd give my hand at a short-term momentum buy, just to appease my inner action junkie, since I haven't had the time to play poker lately.
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