FOM - YAMC?

Having given it due reflection, I thought I’d record some thoughts about the “Future of Mobile” conference which took place on 14 November at the iMax Cinema in London. There are seemingly hundreds of mobile conferences at the moment, so was this “Yet Another Mobile Conference”, or was it “Yes! Amazing Memorable Content!”

Well first, you can’t fault the price. Carsonified did a great job of making it truly accessible in terms of its price. That said, it was a poor venue for a conference, the speakers being pushed up against the guard rail and the audience peering down from the steeply ranked seats, then looking up again to the massive iMax screen on which were projected those teeny mobile phone screens. It was an interesting contrast.

I admit that I was out of sorts on arrival, the Stalinist approach to coffee was not a great way to start the day, there being a choice of black coffee or nothing. Then there was the driving music on entry to the auditorium … OK, I will stop there. On to more positive things.

Brian Fling opened the proceedings, was “excited” to be there and generally did a nice job of being the link man, and his introductory slides showing relative proportions were great. The slides for the presenters are linked from the Future of Mobile home page.

Giving the keynote, Tony Fish did a nice round trip on his life and times, grew up in Watford, apparently. While he was flashing through his images, I began to feel a little queasy, not because of the torrid or depraved nature of Tony’s life, or even because of his living north of London, but because this rapid style on the large screen had a rather dizzying effect. Tony made some interesting points about “digital footprints not being digital identity”, and went on to make some points about content creation and consumption, the different commercial models inherent in the various “screens” (3rd screen, 4th screen etc) and how people should be able to monetize their footprints. All good stuff for a keynote, slightly let down by finishing on a promotional note.

Aside from the usual swipes at “One Web” Luca Passani named the content transformation fiasco that shall not be named, and thinks that the W3C and/or OMA and/or the IETF should send gun-boats to apply sanctions on Vodafone – or something. Luca started on a potentially interesting thread about the monetization of mobile, and ended on some interesting news about the future of WURFL. I’m afraid that stuff was diminished for me by the misinformation in between. Since I’m pretty deeply involved at W3C on behalf of dotMobi I felt moved to make some comments about this (“politely” apparently).

That session left me feeling a bit sour, and my mood wasn’t improved any by having then to visit the dentist, missing colleague Andrea (but knowing it was undoubtedly excellent!) and the panel discussion, and returning just in time to catch Dan “The White Tornado” Appelquist. Dan just wants to be loved and wasn’t going to defend the indefensible, he said, referring to the content transformation fiasco that shall not be named. “User choice is a Vodafone principle, though it’s not always evident in all our activities”, he told us, which is good to hear, though one has perhaps to wonder if this is a triumph of hope over experience. Dan talked about the culture clash between the Web and Mobile and concluded that “the Web is evolving” which is also good to hear.

If it’s well over six feet, looks a bit like a viking and talks like an Australian, then it’s Chaals from Opera. He told us that the desktop Web is not going away, asked us to download Opera Mini 4, and talked about SVG, Video, Widgets and device APIs, the last of which we’ll come back to in a moment. “Diversity is increasing, but there is only One Web”, says Chaals, presumably trying to goad Luca. Luca did ask a question about some bug in Opera, which gave Chaals the opportunity to retort in a droll Antipodean way, acknowledging that there are indeed bugs in Opera but that they do try to fix them, which is yet again good to hear.

Back to Brian, then, who had the unenviable task of talking about the iPhone while not talking about the iPhone, which he tells us is not revolutionary. An interesting talk, but the high point of it was his showing Jason Devitt testifying before Congress about open access, and comparing the growth of the Web compared with the growth of mobile. A fantastic performance, compelling viewing, compulsory probably if you are interested in this space (you are, aren’t you?). If you watched this and like me have become a Jason Devitt fan, you should also check out his testimony to the FCC. Subsequently I became a bit distracted thinking about how big the projected pixels of a YouTube video are, when projected onto an iMax screen.

On now to the lengthy final session, actually very lengthy, which started with the show-stealing presentation on Android, by Dave Burke of Google. Dave didn’t present anything that you haven’t seen in the various YouTube videos, but he did then go on to give an impressive coding demo. Impressive not only because of his sang froid in demoing live but because of the content, which was to show a Web page with script hooking in to the underlying libraries to access the address book. I couldn’t help feeling that this example was chosen with care, talking as it does to the issues raised by the mobile Ajax crowd, and in the process sucking the oxygen out of the environment that some folks are now starting to play in. And don’t forget the $10 million Android challenge. Whatever you think about Android, you have to accept that Google has done a great job of the development environment, and has been smart in addressing developers prior to the existence of any phones at all.

It must have been hard to follow that act, but Simon Rockman did, interestingly, I thought. Illuminated by stories from the past, Simon went on to predict that people will have 6 devices in the future “2 billion SIMs, not 2 billion people”. Simon also observed that having different bills for different devices and different aspects of your life “reduces the bill shock”. Hmmm. Julie Strawson of Monotype then went on to discuss type faces. I thought this topic was a little ill at ease with the rest of the programme, and Julie didn’t seem to have great answers to the politely put questions about licensing fees. By now the lack of a break was beginning to tell on me, and Matt Millar of Adobe had a tough job, I thought, putting his message across: “Make the experience Expressive, Memorable and Desirable”. Presumably he meant by using Flash Lite, but then I couldn’t tell why you wouldn’t use Ajax to do the same things.

It was unfortunate that the panel which concluded the session came after all that. The panellists Marek Pawlowski, Tom Hume and Barbara Ballard are all highly cogent speakers with much to say for themselves. Sadly, I thought this was an opportunity missed, for a start, the arrangement of the audience was very unhelpful for a panel of this kind. Also after a marathon session, the panel was the only thing between the audience and the after-conference party. Which was highly reviving (and thanks again, Margaret, for queuing for the drinks!)

Finally, while I thought it was interesting and informative, I didn’t think that any of the speakers really addressed the topic of “The Future”, aside from Simon Rockman in his “Back to the Future” kind of way. So, YAMC? Memorable I thought. Poor venue. Great value for money – but would it be worth putting up the ticket price a little in order to get a better venue? I think so.