It’s time to party at Mobile World Congress

[This is the latest installment of Jonathan Goldberg’s MWC 2013 travelogue. We’re hoping he won’t be too exhausted to file another news-filled post tomorrow. –Ed.]

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Tonight is the Night of Parties. Twitter, Nokia, Ericsson, Andreessen Horowitz, and a few others hosted after-hours events today. Last year, Google won the best event title by general acclaim. This year they did another great event, but word on the street is that Air Watch had the real blow-out. The array of choices is overwhelming.

All this makes for some late nights.

The show officially closes at 7 p.m. But many companies host cocktails starting at 5 or 6. Getting out of the Fira conference center can take an hour.

Then, people in Barcelona eat dinner late. Exceptions are made for all these strange foreigners, but most of the year if you go into a restaurant at 8 p.m. you’ll qualify for the Early Bird discount — and that’s if the restaurant is even open yet.

See where this is going?

8 p.m. is too early for dinner. So a lot of times people hold a business meeting over drinks. Then a business dinner at 10. Swing by the “Bubble over Barcelona” party after that. The first live music act at the Google party goes on at 10:30. And the club is open until 2:30.

At this point, you have to be careful. If you still have any charge left in your phone, you may get a text from a friend. And if they’re Nokia employees they probably have a table at a nice lounge with a cold bottle of vodka and good champagne.

By this point transit is hard to come by.

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And it is probably around this time you remind yourself that next year you really, really should not schedule any 8 a.m. breakfast meetings.

Buenas Noches, Barcelona.

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Photo credit: VentureBeat/Jonathan Goldberg

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