AT&T Buffs Up Its Tech Image With Anderson Cooper, Game of Thrones and a Big Appeal to Business

AT&T doesn’t own Time Warner yet, and it’s already rolling out the star power.This week, the Dallas telecom giant held a two-day tech conference in Grapevine to discuss innovation and disruption and showcase its own digital transformation. The invitation-only event, called the Summit, featured George W. Bush, Mark Cuban and Aerosmith. And it was supposed to be all about AT&T’s business customers. They may feel overlooked as AT&T pushes deeper into entertainment and focuses on winning approval to buy Time Warner.That pending combination could face regulatory resistance, but AT&T still brought in the iron throne from the set of Game of Thrones. It also recruited CNN’s Anderson Cooper to lead a keynote with three CEOs.Show business is clearly part of the event business, and Cooper helped drive home one of the themes of the conference.“Ready or not, destruction is coming for everyone in this room, including the news business,” Cooper told the crowd in the large ballroom of the Gaylord Texan. “And it’s already here.”  Continue reading...