MIPIM 2012: The next time round I'd...

Travel lighter. The smart delegates were one-bag only. Clothes were smart-casual and therefore multi-purpose, while laptops have been comprehensively killed-off by iPads. It’s not that laptops are necessarily technically inferior (though they’re slower to fire up than anything Apple), it’s that when you have to take them out of a laptop case when they go through the airport scanners they are a real faff.
Take an iPad. They are single-handedly killing off laptops and netbooks because they are easy to carry, fire up immediately, run graphics brilliantly and act like a portable office while looking both stylish and professional. The Russians may have sprayed millions at their stands, but the wow factor for me came from Manchester Airport Group’s Stephanie Mullenger, who clipped a laser-cut 3D model of a development on to the screen of her iPad and ran a movie which lit up different parts of the model from underneath while giving a detailed commentary. That’s ‘Think Different’ in action.
Drink more water. Unless you are jetset, corporate or from a Russian republic, you will be chasing meetings morning, noon and night. Breakfast is grabbed, late-night dinner devoured. In between, it’s a desert where you might just be able to grab a table at Café Roma if you’re willing to fight off the foreign hordes.
Walk nonchalantly across pedestrian crossings. English diffidence meant I hesitated when a blacked-out Bentley came at me when I was halfway across. If I’d displayed Gallic indifference the turbo-nutter batard would have stopped sooner. I resorted to a traditional salute to stop him.
Hire a park bench. Yacht for the week - £80-£100k; Stand in the Palais des Festival - £40-50k if you want room for a table; park bench – you could pay someone to hold it for you for a lot less. Alternatively, you could do what the Germans did and live up to your cultural cliché. They took over part of the beach…
Forget to tell people who I was meeting. Because they blag their way in and hog the person you need to talk to.
Get in training for Morrisons. The Irish bar a couple of streets back from the seafront may not be the last word in clubland, but its combination of 80s disco and Guinness is still enough to finish you of after a day pounding pavements.
Bug the Derby dinner. There was a frank exchange of views, I’m told.
Take ear plugs. You know who you are...