SAN FRANCISCO -- The pre-conference activities kicked off today at the CTIA Wireless IT & Entertainment annual conference.

In today's paper, I wrote about two Seattle-area companies participating in the show. I-mate, a Dubai-based handset manufacturer with offices in Redmond, is launching products in North America this week. And Dashwire, a Seattle-based startup, is launching its beta site that allows people to manage their cellphone from a Web site online.

Today, activities get warmed up with a small event sponsored by Billboard that focuses on how mobile intersects with entertainment. Coming up soon is a keynote by Quincy Jones, the music producer and former Seattlite.

Simultaneously, the Smartphone Summit, which focuses on the enterprise side of the business, hears keynotes by Symbian, a mobile phone operating system developer that competes with Microsoft's Windows Mobile operating system.

Tomorrow, Steve Ballmer will keynote the opening day of the show, and there should be a ton of news coming down the pike, so stay tuned.