BarCamp Leeds

I spent a very enjoyable Saturday attending BarCamp Leeds yesterday, I gave a modified version of my talk called Is That a Computer in your Pocket which went well, standing room only (small room !!)

I ended up spending most of my time talking to folk rather than attending sessions, the Futurology session given by Paul Robinson was interesting and keep an eye out for Doodol over the coming months. I’m terrible with names and don’t have a schedule to help me but if we talked, I had fun, even when trying to convince folk the internet will all be mobile in 5 years :-p

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Future of Mobile

The notes below are a tidied up version of the live blogging notes I did at the event, not as extensive as I would once have done but the wrists aren’t what they used to be…

Full schedule for the day is here

Brian Fring – Blue Flavor

Overview of global population, growth, what percentage use or are projected to use mobile, in short a lot.

LBS is a radical transformation of how we use data, a small dig at the operator for why LBS services aren’t bigger, (truth is they are not but will be, once better access is figured out)

He sums up with the statement that we are at the ‘precipice of the future of the web’

Tony Fish – AMF Ventures

We start with his background – lots of education, likes, uses etc etc done Dick Hardt style but not as slick, I’ve tried it myself and it’s no mean feat to pull off

facts & figures – etc

tries to break down age by usage of phone, if you can’t use the keys due to fat fingers you are 40, if you can text behind your back you might be 20

the new world is built on connecting

convergence is not understood as everyone has a different view of what it means

iPhone joke about saving the 3rd world…hehehe

why is there no one to converge on?, we are no longer market segments but are all now creators, we need a creative balance

cost of creation is now Zero (- not quite…what about network access even on broadband, we all pay an ISP somewhere)

increasingly Telcos give away the device (- erm always the case in the UK surely)

6 Screens now:

1. Cinema
2. PC
3. TV
4. Airplane in seat
5. Mobile
6. Gameboy / Nintendo DS etc

IPR theft is the single biggest activity on the web

Digital footprints are not identity – they are just where we’ve been

my footprints are mine, Google get your grubby hands off it

not interested in Android… (-saying this while presenting as a Mobile2.0 expert seems odd)

Imagine that a billboard serves ad that fits the crowd in front of it however the weak get marginalised by the stronger views, if we only listen to our own voices we’ll end up with terrorists !?!?!?

talking about video iPod (when a mono old school mini is on screen) and a long story which ends up about Harry Potter and shuffle joke – the (older) user is stupid

loyalty is dead

trust is the challenger (- authentication, reputation)

No questions

Luca Passani – AdMob

1994 early mobile content was crap – not monetising – standards got made before monetisers could screw it up though which was good

device / browser fragmentation are all big problems – mainly as they were an afterthought, (- perhaps because people are trying to make the phone be a computer first rather than making data truly mobile)

has a dig at Voda & Novarra over uaprof thing, he has created a site to complain about it, seems like a crusade

the next slide shows the attempts made by OMA & W3C to fix the problem with more about how Voda is breaking the basics of the mobile web

Overview of Wurfl up next including some examples from WALL

Questions:

w3c co chair working group best practices says Luca is an angry man and has it wrong as lots is being done, and I’m sure he is right but easy to stand up and spout when you are angry about something (- taking about the Voda thing again)

Andrea Trasatti – dotMobi

.mobi – simplify dev – the truth about mobile web dev standards

here to help the growth of the mobile web

w3c best procice
mobileOK
core vocabulary
API

a list of best practices from 60 defined

mobileOK basic tests

description of w3c group workings

some discussion at the end on location contextualising the info that .mobi may serve you – it should know where you are – not quite the same thing though surely

Steve Page – Mobile Commerce

Orange search box mentioned (- i thought it was Google !?)

they see all our search terms – social sites top of the list

story about moving from subscription to ad funded and how it’s unrealistic

more about ads – they bid heavily for adwords

above and below line click through rates

Prashant Agarwal – Refresh Mobile

Mippin – cool service – using it already !

downloading appications to mobile devices is hard which is why Mobizines changed to Mippin

design for mobile

make the most of each device – not lowest common denominator

Guillaume Peersman – Dialogue

Overview of PayforIT and how they have a solution in place for billing from different channels

this ‘panel’ felt more like a products & services track, maybe it was and I missed that …

Daniel Appelquist – Vodafone

“not here to defend the indefensible ” (- Novarra thing i presume)

He recalls attending in 1993 the 1st internet conf and how things were not clear then on what the web would be (- his blog post about it is here)

a quick overview of Voda activity related to Web

in 5 years time will the majority of web usage be from mobile devices? he thinks yes (- so do I )

will forget about the mobile vs PC talk , its all mobile…

huge culture clash between ;
web + mobile
and mobile app and mobile content

why mobile is different – UI challenges are raised…

best practice details – makes sense of mobile in the mobile context

all the w3c talk is about serving the majority of devices out there now – Ajax is looking forward

huge need to understand limitations of current devices – ref to WALL again

DOJO toolkit has refactored well

iPhone alert – facebook application shown in a low quality video

SVG tiny 1.2 – check it out – browser will integrate it soon

WiCD – wicked, good things coming

finish with plugs for dev.mobi and betavine

Charles McCathieNevile – Opera
Easily the best talk of the day (for me)

Japan – cool phones, reasonable networks, PC decline?
developing countries due to crap network

props to Shibuya display screen and how its a mobile web app

browser dies, eats battery = no calls – sucks

good points about how had doesnt grow and working at a desktop is ok

dont want to share mobile porn with family

joke about browser context showing google in Hebrew while visiting there

key point – data needs to move too

ecmascript 4 – next gen of ajax

javascript kills battery – ecma trying to fix that

key takeaway – better standards support is important especially as diversty is increasing (more devices etc)

Nokia pushing webkit for all browsers in mobile space at same time as launching mozilla products, plus there are two branches of webkit , programmers are to blame

Brian Fring – Blue Flavor

they have a jargon bucket at work (web2.0, convergence etc)

what he took away from the 1st mobile 2.0 conference

We get shown a video on YouTube of a deposition in America where Devitt(?) is having a go at the Wireless industry

iPhone is unique

I think this is one message I took on board since I don’t really get the iPhone hype, I had accepted that they have done wonders for shifting the perception of how important the UI is.

We finish with a list of 10 unique things:

1. First smartphone for the massess
2. flat rate data (in USA – we have it here in Europe for a while)
3. sold and supported outside carrier
4. no subsidisation
5. updateable software (iTunes)
6. location awareness (if in Starbucks)
7. bandwidth expectations
8. portable device convergence
9. web & mobile standards
10. impact on web communities

Dave Burke – Google/Android
This session was live blogged over at TCUK

overview of OpenHandsetAlliance

and why Android matters

Some brief details – linux 2.6 kernel and drivers, java language framework ( no mention of Dalvik)

mult task – true back stack

complete two way sync

powerful software emulator

open APIs from google

powerful simple framewirk written in java

architecture breakdown – can’t see well and missed picture

Dave moves on to create a new browser which can also read the address book in 7mins 58 seconds, impressive stuff, we finish with the recently announced developer challenge

Simon Rockman – Sony Ericsson

T68 landmark phone

3-5 year adoption in mobile whether operator driven or not

doesnt believe in UMA – people pidgeon hole devices

nokia 5100 rugged phone for india

pink razr – outsold all nokia efforts at that time

increasing trend – not iphone vs gphone – what will win is devices for a specific need

Julie Strawson – Monotype Imaging

adding design to typefonts adds emotion

from monotype – leading global provider of text imaging solutions

at the end of the session people are banging on about costs of fonts, they should be free etc, nice thought

Matt Millar – Adobe

glossy presentation as expected, just use Flash to design everything…..

operators are holding it all back of course…

We finished with a panel discussion put together at the last minute due to a hiccup, nothing to report on that really other than another mention of how better phones for the elderly like Vodafone simple phone (neglected to mention it had been canned due to poor sales)

Summary
I have to say that I agree with some others about it being more about Mobile Web now rather than the Future of….and I chatted briefly to Ryan before the event started about how tough it is to get a decent European event going (we were talking about the web2expo in Berlin last week) and there’s always the problem of who is in the crowd.

I didn’t learn a lot new this time (I guess my OPML file is still pretty good then) but I did meet various folk that I’ve either been trying to meet for a while or happened across so the event was very worthwhile for that reason, it does remind me of several conversations I’ve had on conference formats and how it’s often about meeting people, let’s see how well BarCamp works this weekend.

The truth is that it is very hard, nay impossible to please everyone in a diverse crowd but in the end it was an excellent attempt, the venue was ok but not conducive to live blogging even though I did get some power, my N95 died before the end which was a shame as started using it to capture slides rather than type given how awkward that was.

Alex Linde (Colibria) – WidX – think Widsets but built on open standards (which is much better)
Rebecca Snook (Spoken Group) – short audio stories on your phone done easily
Prashant Agarwal – Mippin – bring the fun back to RSS
Ribot – I owe you a drink (or two)