MoMoLondon is going Mobile London

Yes its nearly that time again, Mobile Monday London's next event will be themed on 'Mobile London' or at least what mobile is doing for the people of London (outside of just calls, text and web that is). If all this comes off (the logistics are complicated this time around) then this should be a really interesting event. More info when I have it, in the meanwhile register yourselves with our Yahoo! group if you will want to attend: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/momolondon and await an email about how to register for the event.

How to make sense of the noise of the Web 2.0 generation ... Web 3.0?

Looking back over the last 10-15 years, beyond the desktop that is, you could sum up the first real movement on the web was around discovery and communication. Then the underlying trend of Web 2.0 has really been around sharing and connecting. One side-effect of the Web 2.0 generation has been that everyone creates a lot of noise, things I will not be interested in clouding my view on what I might be interested. So how to make sense of all this. This is where it all gets complicated of course, if in the last year I have done things like go on holiday, join social groups, attend events, gone to parties, taken pictures and video, blogged, communicated and so on, how do these relate and what is relevant to other people. A recent conversation I have had regarding deep tagging (at the Creative Coffee Club in Central London) provides and interesting step into how you can flag things with richer assets such as video. Tagging right now appears to be the way the web is being sewn together, easier to implement of course but across multiple cultures lacks relevancy and can be very tenuous where two things tagged the same are actually anything to do with each other. Relevancy is a deep subject, the things I have mentioned above regard who I am, where I was, when I was there, what I was doing, what interesting things happened, who was there with me and the same information about them. As I have mentioned, things becomes really complicated as chances are, once you upload these to current Web 2.0 sites you may not able to answer all those questions, especially if you are in a room with lots of people you dont know or cant remember. So the point at which 'things' are captured is going to become more important. The mobile device right now is quite good at capturing basic things like photos, low quality video, texts and so on, and all we typically get in common is a timestamp (which relies on the device time being right). But it is hard to apply this meta data that relates them together, right now that is mainly done in retrospect. Some devices can do things such as geotag, some file formats have additional meta data such as EXIF on photos but it only goes so far. I think the geographical information is only going to move forward once devices really exploit this, GPS is limited especially when you are inside. So how can I capture things and apply the meta data right there and then. If I take a photo on my mobile, yes I might be able to tag a location, yes it will be timestamped but if my phone and the file format provided a way to immediately add some meta data that could go quite a long way to making sense when everything is uploaded. If I am videoing an event, how can I pin/tag things within that event so I can find them later on, deep tagging is not something you find in video/audio capture devices right now but it would be a great addition that could allow a system to automatically edit some of your assets when uploaded. Another interesting trend has been in micro-blogging where people write short bursts of what they are up to on things like twitter, facebook and so on. Because again this is timestamped, information such as this could help sew together other captured assets and apply some level of relevancy in a manner users might be more comfortable with. I realise some thought has been put into areas such as the symantic web, however I think the factors that will make this all work is when the user doesnt need to do anything or very little to apply this information at the point of capture. Anyway food for thought.

Upcoming needs to move forward

I have been a long time user of Upcoming, but I have noticed in recent months the number of events being posted there has drastically fallen, or at least in the London area that is my feeling. Upcoming (now owned by Yahoo!) has the potential to be a lot more than it currently is. Being that it is really based around what is happening a where the user interface doesnt have a natural feel for these simple requirements. Of course its major thing is that you can see what other people are interested or attending and a mix of this along with better tools but this is where competition from social networks such as facebook become a challenge, especially in the fact that facebook is a rapidly evolving platform that keeps the interest of its users hooked. Also there feels like a missed opportunity in not having a decent mobile site, this should really fit into a calendar and alert people to new events and send reminders for events, along with details of where they are. So where now for upcoming. Well I guess the future of Yahoo! is up in the air regards the Microsoft interest so perhaps nothing will change for a while, which is a real shame as I like these social networks that just focus on one area rather than try to be something for everyone.

MoMoLondon - Mobile OS reflections

Last night saw another successful event for MoMoLondon with a busy room listening to the debate on the future of the Mobile Operating System. The speakers brought up some interesting trends in areas such as Smartphones (and what exactly smartphone means), Open Source v Commercial OSs, web applications and how they are integrating more with the capabilities/features of the OS and M:Metrics gave some statistics of smartphone usage in Europe and the US. It was a good turn out, great to kick off 2008 and everyone catching up before the congres in Barcelona.

Anyway, here is a quick audience sweep from the event, David Wood from Symbian is speaking ...

MoMoLondon - February is Mobile Operating Systems

Mobile Monday London is back for 2008 with an event around 'Mobile Operating Systems' to be held on the 4th February. As always register yourselves first with our Yahoo group and from there you will be sent a mail when the registration for the event is opening.

New Year, New Goals

Its been a good break over the Christmas and New Year period, I have just started on a 2 month sabatical to help build up Mobile Monday London and I get a bit of time to relax before going back into Ymogen. So what has changed in the last few months, well firstly MoMoLondon is now a limited company, with directors (me being one) and we now have plans to move forward regards sponsorship and what we want to do for the community in the coming year. And we already have plans for events such as a 48 hour developers event (more on that later) and some other exciting themes in the coming months, february looks likely to be the next event. Keep your eyes on mobilemonday.org.uk for further news.

MoMoLondon November - Ad Funded Mobile Services

Just dropping a quick note in to say that the theme for Mobile Monday London for November is Ad Funded Mobile Services sponsored by the kind folks at AdMob. We are holding it this month at Imperial College. I will be the MC for the evening (better remember to iron a shirt) and it will be another packed evening ... oh did I mention it will be our 2nd Birthaday :)

Mobile Monday London 8th Oct - The Mobile Web Revisited

Yes it is that time of the month again. Next monday MoMoLondon is back in town after the networking and MoMo Global Summit. The topic for October ... and rather well timed ... is The Mobile Web Revisited. There is an interesting lineup from the W3C, dotMobi and Openwave amongst others to show where things have moved in the last year. With all the goings on regards the Vodafone mobile web proxy I think this should draw more interest than normal (places are going very fast as I type). If it isnt already too late, register yourself at our MoMoLondon Yahoo Group and add yourself to the October registration database.

Old school v New school communications

In the old days (!) telecommunications revenue worked roughly on 2 models. You either took a share of the revenue as a carrier or a share of the revenue as the terminator of a call. So making international calls, the cost was eaten up by a number of carriers, and if it was to a premium line the carriers would pay out to the terminator of the call (either one off charge or based off call duration). Right now, chances are you are still using your desktop email client or a Blackberry for reading and sending emails, so there is money being made in the client application or device. Nobody really pays for webmail, this is the domain of the advertiser.

Just as you got comfortable with this ... everything is changing. The web and broadband has meant that these days an increasing amount of communication is permformed online and in many cases through the browser. It is very interesting with the rise of social networking sites such as Facebook now being used as communication devices between people and groups of people how this affects previous models such as voice calls, email and SMS. These days email and SMS are routes for messaging, but the user may not be using their mobile phone or email client. Services like Twitter, Facebook and Skype have changed the traditional models of communication and throw into question how this can all be monetised. Unless you can monetise being a carrier or a terminator of the communcation, where is the money to be made? Blyk feel one way is to do all of this for free is to use an advertising model. It will be interesting to see if this model works on the long run, as it could be disruptive to traditional billing models for communcation.

With the level of communcations now being passed through social networks, person to person through the applications rather than email or text, what threat does this pose to mobile networks. To communicate with me, I can insist you need to be part of my friends list or some group ... with many tools available I have the power to decide where I receive messages from. If users could run an application on a mobile that hooks up with Facebook to do messaging, video and voice, why use the mobile network for anything other than data transfer? If I was in a mobile network right now, I would be paying close attention to this area as you wont be the ones in control of peoples communications and contact lists any longer.

Swedish Beers on tonight

Quick note to anyone wanting to catch up in London in the absence of a September Mobile Monday London event will find networking and drinks available at the Swedish Beers evening at the Nordic Bar on Charlotte Street near Goodge Street and Tottenham Court Road underground stations. Its mainly the media and mobile community but its a good event to get together and chat about work, life, the world whilst drinking some nice beer from the north.

Mobile Monday Global Summit - Part Two

I am back in the Uk and I think it is time for a quick summary of the Mobile Monday Global Summit. The main part of the summit was held in Helsiki and over 1000 people attended a joint event with presentations from many companies and panels involving a number of people from the Mobile Monday Global community.

Sunday saw the organisers from around 25 chapters globally get together to discuss the future of MoMo and how the global community can work together more effectively. The geographical spread of the countries represented was impressive and shows how important a network the MoMo community has now become worldwide. Sunday also saw the opportunity
for some members of the world press to interview various MoMo organisers before the main summit event on the monday.

Monday came, the venue (Wanha Satama in central Helsinki) was ready for a number of speeches, discussions and panels to run in parallel. The event was opened at 8.45 by Jari Tamissito who gave an open welcome to everyone. Then each of the MoMo organisers introduced themselves to the audience. There were around 30-40 members representing the countries from eastern-asia right through to north and south america.

Once the event kicked off the morning was filled mainly with representitives from Gartner, KDDI, Elisa, Nokia and so on. Also there was a panel for Start-Ups including SoonR, Qiro, Fring and Floobs. Blyk spoke about their upcoming release of advert-funded mobile services that caused a few discussions afterwards, I think a lot of people will be watching how successful Blyk will be regards users acceptance of adverts on their mobiles.

After lunch and some networking, there were 3 panels mainly made up from the organisers of MoMo globally on the subjects of Mobile Entertainment, Mobile Marketing and Mobile Social Networking. Go to Flickr to view more of my pictures (or search for mobilemonday globalsummit and you will find many pictures there).

I was there along with Dan Appelquist on behalf of the Mobile Monday London chapter. Please contact either Dan or myself (alex@mobilemonday.org.uk) if you wish to catch up from the event or would like to get involved in MoMoLondon activities either as a speaker, sponsor or host to our future events.

Mobile Monday Global Summit - Part One

I am sat at my hotel in Helsinki just taking a breather from the Mobile Monday Global Summit public day. Yesterday the organisers from around 25 countries worldwide (and I mean worldwide from asia, europe and the americas) discussed the future of Mobile Monday. The interesting thing is that we have over 50 chapeters now and all the time new ones are either launching or are planning to launch. It has been really good to catch up with people who before this weekend have just been names and contacts in a social network. MoMoLondon is working closely with a number of other chapters to bring Mobile 2.0 in San Francisco in October and just as a note, they are still looking for sponsorship. I will report back with a fuller review of the summit when I get back home and get some more photos onto Flickr. Just to say, MoMo globally is hotting up for the future, we just need to work together more than we have been doing and the summit is helping bring us together.

Mobile 2.0 Conference

My fellow MoMoLondon organiser Dan Appelquist is again co-organising the Mobile 2.0 conference over in San Francisco in the US. This was popular last year and a great success so I am told it is worth getting in early when registration opens (keep an eye on the conference page).

Global Mobile Monday Summit

I will be travelling to the Mobile Monday Global Summit mainly for the sunday and monday (although will be around on tuesday morning). So if you want to catch up about the mobile industry, want to chat about social networks and collaborative efforts then come and have a chat. Take a look at the agenda and you will see that outside of 3GSM this is about the main global event in the mobile industry. I will be there along with fellow Mobile Monday London founder Dan Appelquist. I believe there are still some available places for registration on the main site, not sure about the accomodation at the actual main hotel. I will report back with some event news when I am out there.

Mobile Monday London August - Mobile Identity

Next weeks Mobile Monday London will be held at Sun's offices in Central London. The topic this month will be Mobile Identity which will be covered by a number of speakers and then discussed as a panel with questions from the audience. I will be MC for the evening. To attend you will need to register first with the MoMoLondon group and add yourself to the database for August.

Premium rate back in the news ... yet again!!!

Well I spoken about this before, at least once in this blog. Premium rate services are back in the news, again and this time the BBC is coming clean about various irregularities in picking competition winners blaming things like technical problems ... by this I assume they means 'people making the wrong decisions' as opposed actual problems with their technology. Anyway, this is covered in a BBC article which is worth a read, I have also noticed ICSTIS have promised to up their involvement within the industry, which I have always seen as part of the problem. If you just let your industry look after itself, this sort of thing is going to happen. This is the first time I have seen the words ICSTIS and proactive used together. This is seriously undermining trust for these organisations and no doubt there are jobs on the line here. I would suggest that the industry does some heavy self policing and make sure things are above board.

Mobile Monday London - Mobile Identity

Monday August the 6th has now been set as the next MoMoLondon ... and I must say it will be good to get the event back nearer the start of the month again! This time around the theme will be based around Mobile Indentity which is really important subject to discuss in such a group. In recent Web 2.0 discussions I have had outside of the industry with general users, Identity and trust seem to be the top subjects people discuss and worry about.

You read so much in the press about potential employers using social networking sites to check up on candidates. There is also the debate about how people use alternate identities, multiple identities (depending on which social network they are in) and how all of this comes back to things like payments and knowing who you are. It is interesting that the grey area between my identity regarding a credit card doesnt really differ that much to my identity in the respect that I own a mobile phone, for which I have an account. The regulations within the EU have been opening up to allow more flexibility in payments on mobile phones and I think this will lead to more interesting discussions around identity and how to qualify somebody is who they say they are. In the last 5 years I have worked for companies that provide services via mobile for clients in the childrens broadcast TV space, it is important that content (such as images and video) are coming from real kids and that this content can be checked against the right people for being authentic. This is a real problem to moderate with such huge amounts of UGC being passed around these days between users and storage sites such as Flickr.

Anyway, I am sure we will touch on some of these areas in August so come along. Join our user group at Yahoo. We are still looking for authorities on this subject, so anyone fancies speaking or demoing a related product at this event should contact either Dan or myself (dan@mobilemonday.org.uk or alex@mobilemonday.org.uk).

Flash mobs are back

Just when you thought it was safe, there are a number of flash mobs going on in the UK on the evening of the 19th ... more info at Media Stars blog.

MoMoLondon mixer last night

Last night saw a group of MoMoLondon enthusiasts brave the British summer weather (eg Lightening, thunder and heavy rain) to come along to our mixer evening at Floridita in Soho Central London. There was a good group as always, having a nice few drinks (sponsored kindly by GreyStripe) .

So many interesting conversations were had, some recollections of the Chinwag summer party queue system and how it felt more social in the queue than when we all went in :)

On another subject, Yazid Aksas of GreyStripe brought along his new iPhone to show everyone ... which was kindly (or not) shown around by MoMo's Dan Appelquist for all to look at and drool over. It looks a neat sized device with a nice screen and good build quality ... anyway, I am not going to write a review of it here :) See Dan pictured with a cheesy fixed grin on his face (some people eh!).

Mobile Monday London ... Monday 9th drinks evening

Mobile Monday London this monday (9th July) are holding an open drinks event in Central London. There is no registration, just come along from 6pm onwards and join us for a drink (smartish dress code at the bar). The venue is right in the middle of Soho at:

Floridita
100 Wardour Street
W1F 0TN
(map)

So I will look forward to seeing some new faces and our members monday evening! Remember to bring along your colleagues as well, we want this to be a nice busy evening.