Posts Tagged ‘Event’

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Mobile 2.0 Silicon Valley

Sunday, October 18th, 2009

Just back from Mobile 2.0 Silicon Valley, and here is a short write up of the event. Of course you can also read the Twitter stream here.

It is the second year that I have had the pleasure of representing O2 Litmus in San Francisco. It really is a unique event in the calendar. It’s run by the community for the community. It’s large enough to meet a variety of really interesting and influential people, but small enough to be personal and interactive. Unlike so many events where presenters and panelists speak and run, at Mobile 2.0 they hang around to speak, listen and network.

The business day opened up with a keynote from Intel’s Pankaj Kedia. Pankaj’s opening video “what is cool?” is shown below.

Highlights of Pankaj’s talk were Internet is going mobile. Every mobile device becomes a mobile computer. Computers become truly personal presenting multiple ecosystem opportunities.

Some interesting stats were provided:

  • 2 billion photo’s are uploaded to Facebook every month
  • 1 billion Google searches per month
  • 22 billion videos uploaded to YouTube per month
  • 210 billion emails sent per month

Pankaj also covered Moblin, a new mobile O/S from the Linux foundation:

Next up was the first panel of the day, “Developers, Mobile Ecosystem Development & Third Party Services & Applications” the moderator was Gregory Gorman, Tertius Advisory Services.

Developers, Mobile Ecosystem Development & Third Party Services & Applications

  • Mitch Oliver, Vice President, Ecosystem Development, Qualcomm
  • Terrence Barr, Senior Technologist & Ambassador, Sun Microsystems
  • James Parton, Head of O2 Litmus, O2 UK
  • Oliver Gunasekera, Global Alliances Director, Symbian Foundation
  • Patrick Mork, Vice President, Marketing, GetJar

A short clip from the panel is below. Later this week I’ll post my thoughts around the subject of what a mobile operator can bring to the mobile developer ecosystem which we discussed on the panel.

James Parton at Mobile 2.0 SF from O2 Litmus on Vimeo.

My personal favorite part of the day is always the VC panel, this year being no exception.

  • Tim Chang, Principal, Norwest Venture Partners
  • Michel Wendell, General Partner, Nexit Ventures
  • Greg Franklin, Principal, IntellectPartners
  • Frederic Veyssiere, General Partner, North America, Innovacom

Some observations from the panel…

  • “mobile apps could be interesting lifestyle apps but not VC fundable companies” Could not disagree more
  • Greg Franklin tip to get VC backing – you need to have strategic partnerships into the value chain somewhere
  • Frederic Veyssiere tip to get VC backing – you need 80% of your team in place
  • Anything to deliver better health care at lower cost will get the attention of the VCs
  • Frederic Veyssiere – the healthcare ecosystem is very complex, which is a challenge for mobile ventures to crack
  • Frederic Veyssiere – telecare apps as example of viable services for ’seniors’
  • Tim Chang – daily active usage (DAU) is the key metric in 2010 – in-app charging and micro-transactions are key models
  • Michel Wendell – avoid corporate investors at round A funding because they will want to heavily influence the company direction
  • Frederic Veyssiere – trend is towards mobile corporate investment to take lead positions in early stage funding rounds
  • Tim Chang – bring game mechanics to real world activities for mobile app success.
  • Tim Chang – take gaming mechanics and apply to other markets – e.g. gaming + LBS (Foursquare), gaming + healthcare, gaming + music (e.g. Guitar Hero)

On Day 2 of the conference we moved to Microsoft’s facilities in Mountain View for a developer oriented day of debating technology and the challenges / opportunities of mobile.

Paul Golding represented O2 Litmus on the first panel of the day “Evolution of the Web on Mobile Devices”

Paul Golding at Mobile 2.0

Be sure to read Paul’s thoughts on his Mobile 2.0 Blog post here.

All in all, two great days of mobile business and technology, wrapped around excellent networking.

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Video from OTA 09

Friday, October 16th, 2009

Video of the recent O2 Litmus talk at Over The Air 2009.

O2 Litmus at Over the Air 09 from O2 Litmus on Vimeo.

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O2 Litmus update

Monday, October 12th, 2009

It’s been a typically manic time inside the O2 Litmus team that I haven’t had a chance to post an update for a while. Well let me rectify that with a digest of recent activity.

A few weeks ago O2 Litmus was delighted to sponsor and speak at Over The Air 2009. What a great couple of days. I don’t think I’ve ever felt such a positive vibe at an event. We had some great questions in the O2 Litmus session, and the slides I presented are available here:

O2 Litmus @ Over The Air 2009
View more presentations from James Parton.

The unquestioned hit were our new Palm Pre phone’s which we demoed to passers by, word of which quickly spread via Twitter!

Giving a tour of the O2 Palm Pre

You can view the rest of our photo’s from the event here. The organisers are already asking for ideas for 2010, so ping them using @ota09 now!

O2 Litmus itself has been going through a few changes over the past couple of weeks as well. As you hopefully know we are always asking for feedback on how we can improve the service, plus we are eagle eyed when other people comment.  With this in mind we are making a number of small, but important, tweaks to the site.

Firstly the Developers Tools section is now publicly visible. Previously you could only see this section if you logged into the site as a Developer. The original rationale was to keep the site clean and not confuse O2 customers that are visiting the site to try out the apps and services. On reflection, we were perhaps under selling what was available to you as a Developer via O2 Litmus. A number of people have commented “I’m still not quite sure what is does?”. Hopefully with this change, prospective members can now browse for the information they need.

We have also seen a couple of articles referencing that the O2 Litmus community is very quiet. Whilst it is clearly a big job to build a new community from scratch, and we have much to do, these comments have been made after referring the public forums, which seem to be playing more of a one way communication role, than for a two way dialogue. Therefore again, with a sense of transparency at heart, we are going to make all of the forums publicly visible to help promote and stimulate conversations in the community.

If you read the slides from Over The Air, you will be aware of some exciting upcoming developments. First our Palm Developer resources will go live any day soon, so stay tuned for those, and more. Secondly we have introduced our sister Developer community located in Spain, Open Movil Forum. You may also have seen our call for any Developers interested in launching into the Latin American market. This is just the beginning of a much more coordinated approach to serving the Developer community from Telefonica. Next year is going to be very exciting!

Our final development is a long overdue fix to displaying apps inside Litmus, now filtered by device type. This will solve the previous problem of having 10+ pages of apps to sort through to find something for your phone. Sorry it’s taken so long!

Last, but not least, our first Developer compeition “The App Showdown” concluded in September. Our winner was Jon Bonnick, and I had the pleasure of handing over the comedy cheque for £10,000. Congratulations to Jon! Check out www.o2litmus.co.uk for more on Jon, his app, and the compeition.

App Showdown Presentation

Ok, tomorrow I fly out to San Francisco for Mobile 2.0 Silicon Valley. Follow me  on Twitter for live updates from the conference, and I’ll post a wrap up blog as soon as I get the opportunity.

That’s all for now, as always, feel free to contact me using one of the many social media tools available to us in this age of Web 2.0 wonder!

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Plug for Being Digital 2009 including free ticket!

Friday, June 5th, 2009

With only 4 days to go until Being-Digital ‘09 at The CBI Centre, Centre Point.
London. Who will be there?

  • Mike Bracken from the Guardian will be announcing the Guardian’s
    platform strategy building on their recently launched OpenPlatform product strategy
  • Mike Nicholls who built and launched (yesterday) Bing.com (Microsofts
    new search product) will be on the Platforms panel talking about the future of search and platforms at Microsoft.
  • Doug Richard (ex-dragon from Dragons Den) will be speaking with Julie
    Meyer (Ariadne Capital) & Charles Cohen (Probability) about how to grow a profitable digital business.
  • Ed Parsons (Google) and Gary Gales (Yahoo) and others will be
    discussing location technologies and their future.
  • Rory Sutherland (Vice President, Ogilvy One), Nicholas Wheeler
    (Managing Director, ITN On) and others will be speaking about the future of social media.

What is unique about Being-Digital is that there is no PowerPoint.

  • The debate will be lead by chosen authorities in their fields who are all accomplished speakers
  • They will be sharing personal insights into hottest digital topics
  • You will be able to set the questions and guide the discussion via SMS and Twitter
  • You’ll discover innovative new start-ups
  • You’ll be able to present your business to active angel investors
  • You’ll be able to absorb critical opinion shaping your digital strategy

The guys provide a specific demo area where companies can raise their visibility with potential customers, partners and investors. They are expecting around 40 Demo Companies and 200+ digital executives, entrepreneurs & investors making for some excellent networking opportunities along with 2 Angels Den pitch events where startups will be pitching to active angel investors.

If you want to demo email Emma on team@mashupevent.com

UKTI is offering a free booth at Technology World ‘09 in COVENTRY http://www.technologyworld09.com/ To be in with a chance to win this you have to be a demo company at the event.

Find out more here
http://www.being-digital.com/demo/ There is an opportunity to win £5,000 of
virtual office service from eOffice. http://www.eoffice.net/

To register and pay the standard rate of £245+VAT or Entrepreneur rate of £125+VAT please go to www.being-digital.com/register/ However, there are some discounted tickets available from our Partners including SUN, Natwest, eOffice, UKTI and Angels Den. If you want to know more about these please email team@mashupevent.com

If you want to win the only FREE TICKET in the house you have to submit a 30 second video on “what does Being-Digital mean?” http://seesmic.com/mashupevent/

Being-Digital ‘09 has also partnered with B’tween http://www.btween.com/ who are running a complementary digital event in Liverpool on 11th and 12th June (the same week). There is an inclusive ticket for Being-Digital ‘09 and the coach up here along with the speakers.
http://www.mashupevent.com/event/btween-09-being-digital-09

Being-Digital ‘09 is brought to you in by mashup* event – sponsored by: Intel, SUN, NetBenefit, Doughty Hanson, Speechly, BCS, UKTI, WIN and in partnership with NatWest, Microsoft, G2i, DrinkTank, Smarta, Chinwag, Techfluff.tv, Winston&Strawn Bootlaw and The Next Women.

See you there on Tuesday!

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Win the chance to go to the Mobile Web 2.0 Summit!

Wednesday, May 27th, 2009

Win the chance to go to the Mobile Web 2.0 Summit!

We’re giving five developers the chance to go to the Mobile Web 2.0 Summit, which takes place on Wednesday 3rd June 2009 to Thursday 4th June 2009 at the Jumeirah Carlton Tower in Knightsbridge, London

I’ll be speaking on the Wednesday on ‘Mobile Operator 2.0’ and the changing the business model and strategy of operators. That’s followed by a roundtable and panel discussion on the development of operator strategies in relation to increasing mobile user engagement and new approaches to working. The two days brings together some fantastic speakers and panellists, so it should be a great event.

To be in with a chance of winning one of the five passes to Mobile Web 2.0 Summit, just complete the following steps:

1. Register on O2 Litmus at www.o2litmus.co.uk
2. Send an email to james@o2litmus.info with the subject line ‘Contest‘ and the following:

  • Your O2 Litmus username
  • A 140 character twitter-style sentence explaining why you should be one of the developers to go to the Mobile 2.0 Summit with O2 Litmus.

The competition ends at midnight on Thursday 28th May 2009. Winners will be announced on Friday 29th May 2009 on the O2 Litmus site, with the five winning developers being contacted by email after the competition closes with further details on how to get their passes.

Best of luck and don’t forget – our latest marketing campaign is due to go out to hundreds of thousands of O2 customers, so get uploading your applications to O2 Litmus now!

James
www.twitter.com/jamesparton

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O2 Litmus Roadmap Developer Session

Friday, May 1st, 2009

O2 Litmus Roadmap Developer Session
Originally uploaded by jamesparton

O2 Litmus held its first “Live Road Mapping” event on Wednesday this week where we had a good dialogue with some of our member Developers. A big thank you for Elayne and Graham for running to the shops to buy a VGA cable for the projector to avoid a disaster!

You can find the topics covered by visiting the Developer Day thread in the Roadmap section of the O2 Litmus forum. Please be sure to give us your views on the debate.

Next up, O2 has also just announced its X Prize competition. If you are a UK entrepreneur be sure to check it out here: http://www.o2.co.uk/xawards

Finally the next of our marketing campaigns to the O2 customer base begins shortly, so make sure you are uploading your applications to O2 Litmus in anticipation of a larger and fresh audience.

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“Official” O2 Innovation Day Video

Thursday, April 9th, 2009

A little late, but here is the video created by the O2 team capturing the essence of the day:

Also thanks for all the interest in the O2 Litmus Roadmapping event. We sold out the initial 40 tickets, but have just added another 20, so get ‘em while they are hot ;-)

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O2 Litmus Live Road Mapping

Thursday, April 2nd, 2009

Come join us for a few drinks, some food, some networking, and to hear about some ideas we have for O2 Litmus. More importantly you tell us what you want to see in it, hence the title – live road mapping!

For more info and sign up visit: http://o2litmus.eventbrite.com/

Look forward to seeing you there.

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O2 Innovation Day

Tuesday, March 24th, 2009

I was hoping to write this up sooner, but just a few thoughts on the recent O2 Innovation Day that was held at the rather nice Matter Club inside The O2 complex in London on the 16th March 2009.

This was the second year in a row that my team had organised the Innovation Day.

The idea behind the day is to get O2 people out of their day to day working environment. Bring in leading companies that are shaping the agenda of ours and adjacent industries, share knowledge, make connections and stimulate the creative juices.

We learnt a lot from last year’s event, and judging from the feedback I have seen I think we successfully applied a lot of the learning’s. We brutally chopped the Powerpoint, we focused on panel debate and interactivity, and most importantly we opened up.

This year saw a number of companies invited in to demo and network with O2’s senior leadership team. O2 Litmus played its role, with two competition winners (Ribot and Fring) taking their place alongside more established O2 partners like Microsoft & Nokia. I hope this provided some interesting conversation and business development opportunities.

You can read the thoughts of Antony from Ribot here.

You can also watch a couple of Antony’s video’s:


O2 Innovation Day – morning hello part 1 from ribot on Vimeo.


O2 business strategy innovation from ribot on Vimeo.


James Parton introduces O2 Litmus from ribot on Vimeo.


James Parton on O2 Litmus part II from ribot on Vimeo.


James Parton on O2 Litmus part III from ribot on Vimeo.


O2 Innovation Day – Sesson 1, Mobile application and services from ribot on Vimeo.


O2 Innovation day – session 1, Mobile application and services part 2 from ribot on Vimeo.

Hopefully events like this reinforce that O2 Litmus is helping to drive cultural change inside an Operator like O2, and shows we are willing to air our dirty laundry, wrestling with key challenges in an open and collaborative way.

It also tangibly demonstrates we don’t know all the answers, but by using vehicles like O2 Litmus we are genuinely looking to the market and our customers to help shape the future.

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Posted in o2 innovation day, o2 litmus | 1 Comment »

Mobile Monday London, 9th March, Write Up

Tuesday, March 10th, 2009

A quick wrap from last night Mobile Monday London Event, which posed the question “What have Mobile Operators done for us?”

As I was speaking and on the panel I didn’t have a chance to write many notes, but thankfully a few audience members did, and @ribot recorded the presentations for prosperity.


James Parton presents O2 Litmus at Momo London from ribot on Vimeo.


Terence Eden of Vodaone on Operators and Operands, a Love Story – MoMoLondon from ribot on Vimeo.

Check these out for reviews of the evening:

Pudding Relations
Expanding Horizons

You can view my extended 12” remix O2 Litmus presentation here

I felt the evening went well.

There is always a degree of frustration in the room when the Operators get up on stage, and I totally understand why. In the past we haven’t done enough to help the developer community, and it is understandable there is a healthy dose of cynicism when Operators claim they are listening and trying to change for the better.

You can read some of that sentiment here.

I certainly welcome the opportunity to have a more open dialogue between Operators and the Mobile Monday community, and I think we should have a follow up session including some of the other Mobile Operators, especially Orange who invest heavily in Orange Partner.

I think in the main the O2 Litmus message was well received, but you tell me ;-)

When I set out with the concept we deliberately spent a lot of time researching what was wrong with existing Operator developer communities, trying to get under the hood of the frustrations of trying to work with us.

The fact that I was getting similar questions, and may be a sense that the O2 Litmus story was too good to be true, reinforced to me that the insight we gained must have been on the money, because I genuinely believe O2 Litmus can be the breath of fresh air the community has been crying out for.

However O2 Litmus is not the silver bullet to all the problems the world has to offer. We need Developers to join to tell us how O2 Litmus should develop. We can’t hope to get it right without the community taking an ownership role. As I mentioned last night, our thoughts on the O2 Litmus roadmap and API evolution are all public domain in the forums, so please feel free to join and engage in the debate.

My key take out from last night was there is still much to do to reduce the fragmentation in the mobile industry. We as Operators need to do much more to collaborate more closely and reduce the complexity and pain of creating successful mobile applications, and successful businesses.

The green shoots of this new thinking are appearing in initiatives like the GSMA OneAPI project and I will be taking a proactive stance with my colleagues at the other Mobile Operators to put some energy in bringing us closer together. The days of wall gardens are gone, and I don’t intend to be competing with other Mobile Operators for Developers, O2 Litmus is not about that.

It was great to hear Betavine is now promoted from Vodafone Live, I think that is a big step forward, and you should check out their Widget competition where £20,000 is up for grabs.

So a positive evening I felt, and hopefully a platform to build an ongoing dialogue with the Mobile Monday Community.

What did you think of the event?

If you have any questions that didn’t get answered last night, feel free to contact me via Twitter, LinkedIn or james@o2litmus.info

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