Possible Mobile Monday London Media event

I am currently planning a future Mobile Monday London event based around the media industry. In the last few years we have seen the media industry slowly adopt other forms of communication and interaction beyond voice and text services. Also the media (print, radio, TV, web) is the route to market so it is really worth discussing this within the context of where we are heading and where people see future revenue. So I would like to cover how the changing mobile scene affects and enhances the following areas of the media ...

• Traditional Print Media
• Television (Participation TV, iTV etc...)
• Online Media
• Other media (Radio, Teletext etc...)

... let me know your thoughts.

Blog renamed to MoBabble

Well I thought at some point if I am going to generally talk about the mobile industry I should give my Blog a name that is fitting. So MoBabble it is and please let me know if this clashes with another one!

Aggregating social networks

As always in the techsphere, if you have a thought like 'This is great but I wish somebody would do ...' the likelyhood is that somebody will. A couple of articles ago I spoke about how I wish I could bring together many of the social networks and manage them together I start hearing about various resources to do this. A good article is to be found on Mashable that covers such a product that will help people bring things together into one virtual-profile. Rather than repeat everything, its best to read it on Mashable.

Changing face of mobiles in media

Over the last year I have noticed a huge amount of change in the Mobile side of the Media industry. Not only have we new elements such as MobileTV but we are now starting to see a slightly different model of delivering services. For instance a couple of years ago a media company would have a large number of service providers with a multitude of services ranging from web, traditional voice (IVR), SMS and so on. These days many companies now will provide all of these services and manage them all on behalf of the media client. What is interesting is that this is becoming a complicated business model to try and support the now much wider variety of services thanks to MMS and WAP Push, Mobile Web, Games, Applications, Content delivery/receipt, LBS and the list goes on and on. It is evident that providing all of these technologies is a matter of resourcing and investment, however the business model that is required to understand all of these from both the technical and client point of view is a grey area. As always with technology the hardest part always comes down to getting the client to understand how best to use it. I still think many clients dont understand SMS so getting heads around some of the other available technologies is going to be hard work for some. I also believe the way premium rate and charging mechanisms is due for an update now that some big players from the world of credit cards are involving themselves. I believe mobile payments is a bubble we are yet to see as not only does the mechanism need to exist, it needs to be simple and the public to be educated in its use ... ah yes that little detail.

So for the media industry, now the web has really started to hurt the traditional media (print, TV and Radio), where does this leave mobile? The trends have been towards using the mobile to send in personal content such as pictures and videos, however there isnt much of a revenue model around this in the near term unless you find a client happy to pay a minimum fee. On the other foot, are people likely to want to purchase content/things from the media brand directly? Most of issues here come down to throughput, click throughs, requests and so on, but I still dont think most media companies have found the right mix yet.

Apple's new iPhone

Well Apple finally got around to showing their iPhone and first glimpses of it are a mix of good and bad. As a device, I believe it will give the usual mobile manufacturers a kick up the arse to produce better quality user experiences especially when it comes to richer media.

I think this has a huge impact on the future of the mobile web. The easiest way to navigate on smaller devices (as I always believed with my old Palm handheld) is to point at the link you want to follow and not scroll through endless options. Question is, does this change things like the Mobile Web Best Practices or not? It all depends on how other device manufacturers respond to this as not everyone will be bothered in buying such as device as their mobile phone. But as we know these devices have a habit of convergence.

I think if this device can work with 3G as well as other protocols it could be the first device to offer a better seemless experience between on device and off device services. Such as during a video clip, you can go off to watch another or jump over to the web site, say with film trailers as an example. At the moment I think it has been designed with the US market in mind, whether we will see a variation on it for the European market, we will await and see.

Happy new year

Hi there, just thought I would pass on my New Year greetings, hope its a good one for all.

Aggregating social networks?

Recently I seem to have been asked to join so many social network groups, you start to get a little confused to what is where, which contacts you have through which social groups and so on. What would be really nice is a way of aggregating information between social groups that relates to you. For instance, I am a founder of Mobile Monday London, so there are many aspects of that I want to keep up on, also I have been using LinkedIn for a few years, recently I have got into Upcoming, dragged into adding a profile on MySpace and the list goes on. So ... I have about 5 networks, potentially related that I have no direct way of aggregating. So, surely can we integrate these social sites together? I know the same people who are also on many of these sites and there is no link between them. If social networks are to be truly connected, then we need to remove the disconnect between these sites. Ideas anyone?

Its been one of those months

It has been one of those months, you think it is going to be a quiet run up to Christmas and then a million and one things all come along at the same time. Luckily this month I took a back seat in the organisation of Decembers Mobile Monday London. The theme this month was Mobile Social Networking and there was a good mix of presentations and demos. I still get annoyed by people invited along to show demos at our events and they ignore our pointers and basically talk about the company and their clients. I think some people have really misread what we are trying to do a MoMoLondon, I dont think people come along to our events for product pitches.

Anyway, it appears the social networking is the real buzz at the moment, something I missed out of my last blog entry. So back to MoMoLondon, the picture shows everyone networking once Stuart John (Mobile Product manager at Skype) had wrapped up a packed evening. It made a nice change in the more informal surroundings of Skype's new office on Totenham Court Road, even if the seating arangements were somewhat original :) We had presentations/demos from Nokia, 3 (H3G), Intercasting, PitchTV, SoonR and so on.

An interesting event in more detail by Broadstuff covers the irony of social networking and the BBC Backstage gathering of London social networkers if you see what I mean. Unfortunately I couldnt make it to that event but it sounds like everyone had fun. London is very vibrant at the moment with innovative people, companies and networking groups ... great to be part of it I say!

Areas of mobile being talked about

It seems to be a good time to sum up areas of the mobile arena that are creating some buzz at the moment:

• Mobile web - huge amounts of talk in this area, including events such as Mobile 2.0 organised by my friend and Mobile Monday London co-conspirator Dan. A lot of talk seems to be around mobile AJAX, mobile web best practices and various ways of mobile search.
• Mobile payments - such as purchasing items through means such as SMS or an e-wallet system. I wonder when the credit card companies will get in on this act? It appears regulations are being relaxed across europe and finally the networks may actually start to agree on some mechanism that works across the board, lets not have another SIMPay.
  
• Messaging sticks around as always due to high SMS usage. But Skype's recent joint venture with 3 is worth keeping an eye on to see where mobile IM heads and if/when it will have an affect on text messaging.
• Mobile advertising has been spoken about at MoMoLondon as well as quite a few other events recently. It appears everyone is searching for the best revenue stream when it comes to new services such as Mobile TV and beyond.
• Mobile video is back with Mobile TV being the hot subject of the day. It appears most broadcast companies have this as one of thier strategies. Now the debate seems to be around digital rights and copyright of material. This links in with the popularity of video streaming sites like youtube about who actually owns the rights to the content. I see lawyers rubbing their hands as a trend from all of this.
• Mobile networks still dont seem to have their acts in order, all arent exactly in rude health when it comes to profits or market position. Acquisitions and being acquired seem to capture headlines at the moment. I wonder how many UK operators there will be in 5 years time?
• Mobile gaming is more interesting these days, mainly because the handsets have improved so much in the last couple of years. Remember the Nokia nGage ... thank god the manufacturers have remembered that most people use these devices to make phone calls and text each other.
  

Well its worth keeping an eye on many of the industry bloggers (especially Carnival of the Mobilists) to see how some of these materialise. Anyway, over the coming months I will investigate some of these a little further so remember to pop back.

Mobile Monday London November - Phew!

Well Novembers Mobile Monday London went really well. A full house, great reception from Google and I like to think I did a better job presenting this time ... preparation seems to be the key! The great thing about the meeting was the speakers, we had Helen Keegan, Tom Hume, Paul Goode and Ajit Jaokar, each giving their views about major trends in mobile. Some opinions were personal, most from experience and in Paul's case the statistics are difficult to ignore. The Q&A could have gone on all night, but there were drinks and food waiting so I couldnt let it run on too long. As always it is a great experience getting up in front of 150 people and being podcast ... I just hope it doesnt look that bad when the final edit comes together!

Bowled a Googley

Well we opened registration for the November Mobile Monday London group and it filled up almost during a blink. It is interesting running an interest group where you get some active members that learn all about the tools and get stuck in and make the best of things. On the other hand you get people that dont pay attention (too busy no doubt) and we get loads of complaints from people that they receive too many messages from the group ... without checking how they set up their membership in the first place. Never mind, I guess this comes when the group of people expands rapidly.

Mobile Monday London November

Well, another mobile is on the way and this time it is our 1st birthday and we will be holding it on the 6th of November at Google's UK headquarters.

For some mad reason I took it upon myself to organise this particular event and will host the evening. Luckily my credibility has been given a boost by getting on board 4 great speakers from the blogsphere. We are also going to 'big ourselves up' and cover what we have been doing as a group and how it relates to the whole global setup of Mobile Mondays. Plus we are going to have a vote (a simple SMS one) which I have set up here at Telecom Express.

Well I have a few weeks now to get my presentation together and work out what on earth I am going to say in front of around 150 people with a Camera pointing at me. The last 2 times I tried this I think I scored quite highly on the um-ometer. I plan to do a better job this time :)

Mobile Monday London now has over 1200 members and we have been running some very popular events hosted by many of the most important companies in mobile and IT at the moment. We have had some great complements from people from other groups regarding how well setup we are and how we go about organising the events. This tends to help that the UK is buzzing right now in the mobile arena and that we get a good level of attendence which makes people want to host our events. I will be glad for a rest after Novembers event though :)

Wild mobile apps

Just spotted an article on TelecomAsia, Tom Hume has also spotted this one. Interesting thing is number 3 ... a ghost detector. Now at Telecom Express and before that at Broadsystem I set up the mobile services for shows such as Most Haunted Live and Ghost Towns Live and I must say I wonder how this actually works. On Most Haunted they walk around with various boxes of electronics checking for temperature and so on. So does this mean you have to plug something into your phone? Anyway its a great arcticle.

Its been a while

Its been ages since I posted to my blog I thought I ought to put in an update.

First and foremost a quick update on Mobile Monday London. The most recent event was based on Funding, how do you start up a company, where to get funding from and so on. Now the summer is here, we are going to take a break for August before plunging straight back in with the September event on Mobile Advertising. There are now quite a few MoMoLondon events now available on podcast which I reccomend if you want to see where the industry currently is regarding London.

Also I have been over to Finland recently to visit the cities of Helsinki, Turku and Porvoo ... a nice and relaxing holiday. Also took a trip by Hydrofoil (very bumpy ride) to Tallinn in Estonia for a long day out. We also took in a couple of buildings designed by the famous Finnish architect Alvar Aalto. (see picture of his famous lounge chair from Artek).

Anyway, thats all for now, I will try and keep this more up to date.

MoMoLondon and Podcasting

Well its all really busy regarding Mobile Monday London. The March meeting flashed by so quick, we have been talking with Glue regarding the web redesign and finally we have the podcasts online so people that cant attend can still catch up with the events. This was the first demo night, there were several people/companies demoing and it all went of rather smoothly. Dan was MC for the night and did a great job organising the speakers to come in. Volantis hosted the event at BAFTA ... which was nice.

MoMoLondon ... keeps growing

Its been a while since I last posted, January went so quickly. However, for the february meeting of Mobile Monday London I managed to talk myself into presenting the meeting ... seemed a good idea at the time. In the end, the meeting was our biggest yet, with nearly 200 people attending at Google's London offices. They put on a really nice spread and we also had the event podcast. Anyway, to the left is a piccy taken during the Q&A part after the speakers had finished. I must say it was slightly intimidating stood up there with the bright lights on me ... I think I will put my TV presenting career on hold for a while.

The speakers for february were Shannon Maher who heads up the UK engineering for Google, Margaret Gold from Luup, Jeremy Flynn the UK commercial director and Richard Watney and co from Reporo. The theme was around mobile payments and all the speakers had their own styles of presenting, some more confrontational than others. I will post again when there are more pictures and the podcast is made available on line ... hope it isnt too embarassing watching myself fluff my lines!

Mobile Monday London in december

Its not long to Christmas, but it didnt stop a big turn out for the 2nd Mobile Monday London at Fjord/Flirtomatics exhibition space. This time the focus was on the fragmentation of technology in mobile devices including some coverage of Mobile Java being that it is commonly used for applications on different mobile devices.

Much discussion on the group now seems to be what time to start, when to finish (oo eck its getting complicated now) ... and for some reason change the day sort of changing the whole naming convention we had started off with. No doubt we will find a happy medium in time, we even have people moaning because they have to travel long distances, the hint is in the Mobile Monday London name :-)

VoIP and Interactive Voice Response (IVR)

The IVR market has been around now for quite a long time, pretty much since DTMF (touch tone) based phones hit the market. We are all well aware of phoning a number, and going through a set of menus providing some very simple form of interaction to either purchase something, pay a bill, be put through to somebody from a certain department, talk to an expert and so on.

So in the world of VoIP, how does this change? Well it really comes down to how many people will use VoIP whilst sat at a computer or set top box or whatever. You see VoIP has no inclussion of an interactive medium other than the voice, and voice recognition is not quite as advanced as you might hope.

So, are people likely to use VoIP whilst sat at home to interact rather than use some form of the internet, can they be used together, can one trigger off another? Also if mobile phones end up becoming VoIP based how are they likely to interact ... are we still going to use the nasty old (but simple) DTMF system?

Personally I think it is time to think a little out of the box when it comes to voice interactions about how you make choices and how a call is designed. Currently we are stuck in a 'I am browsing' mode or 'press 1 to do something', 'what station do you want to go to?'. Ideally you would use the capabilities of the mobile phone such as LBS, maybe the joystick, maybe the camera ... who knows. Maybe this an area for discussion for the Mobile Monday London interest group.

Next Mobile Monday London coming up.

Well I am a little more active this time in helping out with the 2nd Mobile Monday London interest group. Its taken us all by shock how big the uptake has been throughout the mobile industry, we have over 400 members to the yahoo group and it looks as though we will again have over 100 people turning up to listen to some presentations on 'Mobile device fragmentation and Java'. We have changed the format a little bit to make sure that there is a little more time for Q&A and announcements, plus it seems one of the popular parts is networking over a glass of wine afterwards. The next 2 are already close to fully organised and it appears people are talking about the one in March already ... yoinks !

Sit back, relax and enjoy the view ... oh hell work to do!

Well at work we have finally moved into the main Telecom Express offices on the Albert Embankment opposite The Houses of Parliment. The picture alongside is an actual shot from my mobile phone out of the office window directly behind my desk. Not bad eh?

The main story is that Telecom Express bought out the media division of Broadsystem (where I was working) along with Greenland Interactive and is now working to merge the whole group into a major player in the interactive media circuit. The company provides services such as IVR, SMS, Web and so on, one of my goals of the Mobile Monday London interest group is to perform a bit of R&D both for myself and the company to find out who is doing what in the industry. There is a lot changing at the moment, with the up and coming .mobi initiative along with the mobile web initiative in the W3C.