I want to disagree with what Scott said about Mobile 2.0: “but it was the same old crowd with new, better-designed slides. As an industry, we are clearly still not ready to grab the opportunity and use whatever tactics necessary to grab it.” I don’t think the slides were really all that much better in terms of design, they were about what I had seen before. Overall I don’t think we achieved what I had set out to do, which was to draw the existing online world closer to the mobile world – carrying the principles of user focused design, transparency, and open platforms from one environment into the other. The event of course was not a failure, we made a lot of introductions and connections and hopefully have set the stage for the kind of evolution I think needs to happen. But we definitely aren’t where I was hoping to be.
So the rest of this is going to sound a bit rough, but take it as some tough love. Lots of people are really excited about the event and looking to try to push forward as quickly as we can to keep the movement up. There’s talk of doing another event some time soon, possibly in Europe somewhere. I would definitely love to see it happen, but given my overall position I’m not sure I would be able to make it. So here are some of my takeaways from the event to try to help whoever wants to build on what we did.
There was way too much powerpoint going on. Way too much. Way way way way too much. God, I wanted to slam my head into the table at times when people launched into their stock marketing pitch. 300 of the most passionate and driven people sitting in the audience in front of them and all they can do is yammer on with their canned schpeal? Very frusterating. Fortunately it didn’t keep people from communicating. It slowed it down however, and what I was looking to do was speed it up. Some of the folks were sponsors of the event, and other people besides me had significant social capital tied up in pulling the event together, so I couldn’t just shut people down the way we do at the MoMo meetings.
If I do this again, no sponsors. They’re more trouble than they’re worth. Or we need to do something like Niall and Om did with the widget conf. The sponsors gave money, and then someone else heard the pitches for who got to talk. The sponsorships weren’t tied to any other perks in any way. Excellent idea, wish I thought of that. Our event ended up costing somewhere around 50K to put on (though my numbers might be a bit dated in that respect I think it’s pretty close). We ended up with about 300 people in the room. Most everyone I spoke to said they would be willing to pay $200 for a day long event of the kind. That means we should be able to clear that 50K mark no problem.
We checked out the cell reception in the presentation room when we went to check out the venue, and it seemed to be good. However the day of the event there were a lot of issues with connectivity. I’m not sure what you can do to vet the situation further (and of course this is only really an issue in the US), but not having device connectivity is really a hinderance for people wanting to show off what should be the most kick ass stuff. Maybe getting a hold of a booster to use at the event would help out, just in case.
There are a bunch of hard issues that are in direct conflict that I don’t think we emerged and got talking about. Here’s just a sampling:
- Lots of people looking to publish new content for mobile were upset about the number of browsers and incompatible standards they needed to be familiar with in order to get anything up and online. However the people working in mobile for a while were pissed about anything that tried to plaster over all the differences they’ve spent years learning the ins and outs of and building up adaptations for.
- People coming from the web world insist that the only real way to get mobile used is to make sure that mobile and the web integrate well, that there should be seamless blending of the web and mobile. People coming from places without fixed internet access yell and scream that we really need to stop shoving the web into their perfectly usable mobile only environment.
- Mobile service providers list the myriad ways that people developing mobile applications and content can simply and easily put their content up online and start making money from it. People with mobile content and applications moan that none of the methods for publishing and monetizing their content and applications come anywhere near the simplicity they need, and they just can’t bear the margins provided.
- Existing web publishers keep telling us that mobile is just too early to try to make money off of, don’t bother trying yet cause the ecosystem isn’t ready. However people with novel new applications (the ones that are most well positioned to respect the context of mobile implicitly) have no chance to bring their disruptive application to fruition because the only way to make money is to bolt on a crappy web experience as well.
- People working on standards for the mobile web and application programming environments can list for you a complete alphabet soup of acronyms describing the millions of ways in which mobile application development will be better just a few months from now. People working on applications feel like the standardization efforts take way to long and don’t deliver anything that really makes their lives any easier.
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I don’t mean to crap all over my own event, but I think it’s very important to hold ourselves to high standards and call out what wasn’t done. Otherwise we’ll all end up cheerleading for another 1999 style failure. I view being an event organizer in The New World Order as a position you get to keep because people are willing to give you what is probably the most valuable thing they have, their time and attention. It’s my job to give them enough information and conversation that they’re willing to give me their attention the next time around. Notice of course that nowhere at all does money or sponsors enter into the primary principal. I’m hoping that whoever tries the next one of these (or if I’m allowed to give it another shot – the next time I do one of these) that we can really push the money and sponsorship into the background and concentrate on making it the best event possible for the people in the audience.
Hoorah!
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Very interesting comments. My group looked at the problems of integrating content via broadband aka “the web”. We finally decided that it was virtually not possible given the limitations of issues connected to file size and many issues connected with the mobile devices themselves.
So we decided on another angle and at the time, crazy idea. What about creating a Player on the card (Player Resident On SD Card) We have accomplished this and the result is a solution that operates simultously in Windows Pocket PC, Palm and Symbian EPOC OS. A version of Linux OS is in test along with four variation of different Symbian user interfaces. The power of this system is that the Player application resident on the Flash Chip itself not and not within the handheld.
I am interested in this forum what you all think of such a concept as the limitation in this is that SD cards must be utilized to play content?
Sometimes progress requires a changing-of-the-guard… at the evangelist level. My sincere thanks to everyone who has devoted their heart and soul to moving mobile technology forward. But I feel that the mobile industry is now in need of a fresh infusion of something radically different… perhaps ideas from people who don’t have a clue about the ins and outs of mobile technology… nor care. Ignorance can be bliss.
Not quite sure when or how this new herd of mobile leaders will emerge… until then, we can do what we’ve been doing all along. Change will happen when it wants to happen.
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Mike,
Couple quick comments on the meeting…
1. I met-up with some good people at the meeting, so right away it met my definition of a worthwhile conference. Good to have lots of opportunity to meet new people and network.
2. I was a little disappointed in the content. From my perspective was focused too much on web interaction on cell phones, and mobile is a much broader topic. Yes cellular is driving a lot of mobile interaction (with data and people), there is a lot going on in automotive, purpose built devices (e.g. multimedia players), tablet computing… Coming from the platform perspective looking at mobile thru the web perspective seemed constraining.
3. If you have the event again look at doing at http://www.computerhistory.org/about/rental/ – public wireless, no cell problems, large auditorium with break-out rooms. [Disclosure - I've volunteered there since 97.]
4. I also wanted to hear more about market dynamics and business models. Lot of technology changes are creating opportunities in this area. The answer to my question about “Carrier interference” was not satisfying. More about where we could be, and thoughts on what has to happen to get there. What about (spectacular) failures and what did we learn.
5. How do you provoke more attendee interaction, both with one another with speakers? The presentation-lecture format with panels and Q&A was OK, but would be interesting to provide a structure for personal interactions in smaller groups. OTOH may be too large a meeting to do that with the resources MM has?
6. Overall a good meeting. For an inaugural event good job: grade B.
I sense we in the industry need a user-to-service approach instead of the other way around. Remember that the Web as we know it didn’t exist until there was a reasonable browser available that could show pictures and do some formatting. The same goes with phones: Look at what a phone can do and what a user wants to do and design the services based on that. Don’t just think browser access or SMS access etc. Think broad and use the amazing amount of technology phones already have to build service users want. Don’t wait for tomorrow’s technology. Everything we need is already in the phones.
Awsome comments Lee, thank you. About #5, I would love to have the session (or at least some of the session) run more like BarCamp, with participants signing up for a room to lead a session in and having multiple sessions going on at once so that people can vote with their feet for what they want to listen to. The Computer History Museum would work out fantastic in that respect, great recommendation.
Anders, definitely agree, everything needed is on the phone already we just need to figure out how to use it.
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Largely agree with your comments Mike. However, I got a lot of positive feedback from people as well. This was definitely a learning experience. Agree the next event has to have a strict separation between presenters and sponsors. We also need to ban powerpoint or at least scale down the powerpoint. Finally we need to shorten the schedule or split it into a couple of tracks.
Anyway, I think it was an overwhelmingly positive just that we managed to fill the room with people willing to listen to the mobile message, even if that message could have been delivered better in some cases.
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Mike, sorry to hear that your event did not fulfill you expectations.
Anyway, this is not very suprising once you let everyone talk except those who need to make mobile work today, particularly developers.
Luca
Luca, fair enough. Who should we get to speak next time? I need names. I am a mobile developer, and we had people building applications speaking. Who is it that you have in mind besides yourself?
I can think of another 2 or 3 names at least. Drop me an email privately or ping me on skype one of these days if you want to discuss.
Luca
Mike, I’ve written my own review of the event which will go up on the blog shortly. I just wanted to make one comment about the format: Osney Media organise a number of conferences here in the UK and they have session presentations (kept very short), followed by a 20 minute session in which each table of (typically 10) delegates discuss the issues, and then table their conclusions back to the entire forum via a nominated spokesperson. This way you get genuine debate among a small group but then it is shared with all. When I’ve been to these events it’s worked really well. Better IMO than splitting into smaller rooms with splinter groups addressing individual topics.
Paddy
Paddy’s Verry long review is now posted at OpenGardens blog http://opengardensblog.futuretext.com/archives/2006/11/mobile20_great.html Hope you like it!
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I also attended the event on Monday and in my opinion it was not as bad as you might feel. There were a lot of interesting people to talk to – and that’s the main thing I was looking for. The presentations were 50% interesting – have to agree that there were too many powerpoints and too many presentations about plain uninteresting things (especially the one from Verisign). Still there were a lot of interesting things to be heard.
I’m a web developer trying to get my own services on mobile browsers up and running and the event cleared many things up and also strengthened some of my assumptions that i had about many things in this field. My summary about the event can be found on my blog here: http://www.pavingways.com/mobile2event-review_59.html
I hope there will be more events like this, maybe a little more tilted towards smaller companies (like mine), towards developers (because we are the ones that will build the applcations that make people use the mobile web), maybe at a cheaper location (the entrance fee was more than ok to me, double the fee hadn’t hurt), also more tilted towards networking between professionals in the field.
Rocco
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