Yes, I admit, I was one of those guys, in the back, bashing the Mobile Network Operator Panel. Couldn't help it, Anastassia Lauterbach and her "numbers" had taken me seriously. But, from the start:
- We landed in Barcelona, on a flight by the Iberan lowcost ClickAir, with a considerable amount of heat, specially on the subways, where's not AC. - Stayed on the NH Rallye Hotel, right near Barça FC stadium and just 20 minutes walk to ENSADE Forum. - Didn't got english speakers among the spanish people. - Got a lot of wireless networks, apparently there's a city wifi AP everywhere. - Had dinner in two italian restaurants, drink a lot of Estrella's and Coke's. Morning Event: - Breakfast was only coffee and juice and we're starving - The keynote from Nokia's Pekka Pohjakallio was interesting; he talked about innovation, the history of nokia and where she's heading to. Smart advertising, less features that users care and use were advices. The news (to me) was on how Ovi will be the nokia's developers platform, to possibly compete with iphone apps marketplace. - Comscore stats: listening music, ringtone and games at 29->33 and 35% to 55%, 113% of growth in social networks, music (44%), video (37%) and maps (31%) of network use. - Social Media Panel; was refreshing and where the mobile bashing started. The applications guys ranted about on how the mobile operators are closed. Tommy Ahlers was the "rock star" there, because of Vodafone buying ZYB. Charlie Schick, from Nokia, made the sheep act. Antonio Vince Staybl, from itsmy.com got this pearl: "with an iPhone you can browse, then you can browse and browse again, there's no innovation there". Best presence on the panel: Doug Richards from Trutap, clear, credible and enthusiast. - Startups Sessions: thumbs up to aka-aki, dial2do; thumbs down to all the others, they didn't got me. - VC Perspective Panel: Toni Fish, the best moderator so far, had did his job and presented us with interesting questions to the panel, where Inma Martinez from Stradbroke Advisors, was the most active one, with nice tips. Maximilian Niederhofe from Atlas also round up some advices and was open to startups. The key theme here was on how the consumer data is important. The big lost there: Google that didn't show up. Lunch: - There were two other guys there from Portugal, WOW!! :) Afternoon Event: - The Operator Perspective Panel: ahhh this his where I bashed the panel, shouting from the back "what the f*ck?" and "you're the new ISP's". Bottom line, where's the comment that I've made on Max blog about it: http://www.maxniederhofer.com/2008/07/04/mobile-20-the-conversation-in-the-wireless-industry-becomes-a-shouting-match/ "Second, I was one of those bashing the panel from the back of the room, as I didn’t understood where the people from T- She said that one of their problems was the excessive use of P2P and Youtube, well Sherlock, welcome to the real world of ISPs. They’ve made it “their problem” when they went after the ISPs for the ADSL and Internet access, with those 3G dongles. Instead of providing a good mobile internet user experience on every handset, they are providing two lousy ones with 3G dongles and their high rates, as with the no real internet access product on the mobile devices, where there’s no good data I know that they have an infrastructure problem, but as I “shouted”, they’re the new ISP’s, they should be thinking about data Also, the “come to us with your business plan, and we’ll help you” sounds so bad…" - Startup Sessions: thumbs up to Taptu and Nimbuzz. - Open Business Models: Mike Butcher, the best afternoon moderator with quite a show going on, Ilja Laurs from GetJar with nice stats about the use of mobile applications, Leif Fågelstedt and Ray Anderson also did a good job on presenting and talking about their companies. Mike opened then the panel to audience questions and mine was: "Europe has 27 countries, in each one there's at least 3 operators, some are completely closed, some don't allow external applications of features and others want exclusivity on applications in their country, so how did you handle this fragmentation for your applications ?" Only Ilja and Leif answered, "you can't! that's the problem". Like I said to Rudy before leaving, it was a great event! Looking forward to next year! //VD _______________________________________________ tce mailing list tce@lists.paradigma.pt http://lists.paradigma.pt/mailman/listinfo/tce
