MobileCampNYC2: Attendance limit raised to 200
MobileCampNYC
we have got very good news for MobileCampNYC2 coming up this Saturday:
Due to popular demand and some logistical shuffling, we are now able to accommodate up to 200 participants including everyone on the waiting list.
For those formerly on the waiting list: Thank you for your patience, welcome to MobileCampNYC2!
For those that notified us of their absence: Thank you very much, this helped us a lot to free up spots for others.
All further event details can be found at http://barcamp.org/MobileCampNYC2.
With best wishes and looking forward to having you over on Saturday,
your MobileCampNYC2 Orga-team
--
MobileCampNYC2 Orga-team
People: Alexis, Andy, Indira, Ritwik
Email: mobile...@gmail.com
Wiki: http://barcamp.org/MobileCampNYC2
Welcome to the camp!
Ritwik Dey
W O O T !
Mikecp421
On Nov 7, 2:23 pm, MobileCampNYC <mobilecamp...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi everyone,
>
> we have got very good news for MobileCampNYC2 coming up this Saturday:
>
> Due to popular demand and some logistical shuffling,* we are now able to
> accommodate up to 200 participants including everyone on the waiting list.*
>
> For those formerly on the waiting list: Thank you for your patience, welcome
> to MobileCampNYC2!
>
> For those that notified us of their absence: Thank you very much, this
> helped us a lot to free up spots for others.
>
> All further event details can be found athttp://barcamp.org/MobileCampNYC2.
>
> With best wishes and looking forward to having you over on Saturday,
>
> your MobileCampNYC2 Orga-team
>
> --
> MobileCampNYC2 Orga-team
>
> People: Alexis, Andy, Indira, Ritwik
>
> Email: mobilecamp...@gmail.com
Alexis Rondeau
Alexis
Mike P
can do, thanks.
Mike
Dean Collins
I just sent this through to
the newtech-1 list but sure not everyone on this list reads it there so thought
I’d post my blog post here as well.
Got any thoughts? Love to hear them.
http://deancollinsblog.blogspot.com/2007/11/barcamp-mobile-nyc2.html
photo credit: doryexmachina
So MobileCamp NYC2 was held
last Saturday in lower Manhattan with at least 200 people in attendance or
about double
last years event.
I wanted to hold off for a few days before blogging about it to collect my
thoughts. I hope I don't offend anyone with my comments below but I've come
away from this event with some very strong opinions that I'm sure not everyone
will agree with but I'm happy to 'bet' money on these conclusions.
If you've been reading my blog for a while then you'll know that I've worked
commercially on a number of different mobile projects and posted about my own
personal interest in the mobile space regularly (search mobile
posts) so i think I've got a fairly good grasp on whats going on.
I also think that I tend to concentrate on the more commercial aspects of
startups and technology so I might be coming at problems from a different way.
So I've broken down my comments about the event into 3 parts;
-Developer Enthusiasm
-Carriers
-2D codes
So firstly the good news, Developer Enthusiasm for mobile computing and the
positive value it can deliver to our daily lives through persistent full time
communication/computing applications is really high. It's one of the things
that sets the USA apart from other countries I've lived in (it's also something
I'm going to blog about later this week - check out my post on the US
dollar/exchange rate in a few days).
It's also amazing the physical output a single lone developer can deliver on as
well. For example Peter Nofelt and his Mogoso
Mobile Search application. This kid has a day job full time working in the
financial space and no budget but is delivering better mobile search results
than Yahoo etc because he has a real eye for perspective and for whats really
important in a successful mobile application.
It never ceases to amaze me when I go to a barcamp or similar the amazing ideas
and concepts individual developers come up with.
If you run a non IT business and want to find ways for IT to help your
business, ignore your tech department and go and hang out at your local BarCamp
for a weekend, you'll find 10 different ways you can take advantage of changes
and help your business out.
Ok now for the not so good news;
- Carriers. There were more than a few carriers at the event, from the
"trying to be progressive" Orange to the ....ex data service product
manager from Nextel now off running a new startup so secretive that she got up
to talk for 30 minutes but couldn't tell us anything about her new company AirArts .
Mary raised the point that new applications don't always deliver the end user
customer numbers that they are often predicted to deliver...and the example she
used was at CTIA last year everyone was all hyped up on Mobile TV being the
guiding light and yet just 12 months later everyone is wondering what happened.
That if your application cant survive on 20% revenue (eg after the carrier
takes their 50% and then the aggregator takes their 30%) then maybe your
product wasn't meant to survive in the first place as it's not commercial
enough.
What can I say but I was depressed after the session that Mary ran, the summary
of her position on why mobile carriers aren't moving as efficiently as I want
is that ...they want to bill you for services but they just don't want you to
use much in the way of data.
(Now for those of you who haven't been to a barcamp please understand it is a
very 2 way 'discussion'. You are meant to be honest and contribute freely to
the point that one of the 'rules' of barcamp is that if you dont feel you are
contributing to the discussion then the rule of two feet apply and you are
meant to get up and walk out of the room).
Ok well my response to this one was easy, and I think might have shocked some
first time attendees but afterwards a few people came up and said I was right
on the money with "......carrier marketing/product development teams blow
chunks".
My response to Mobile TV was, Yes Mobile TV is available on my handset (HTC
8525) but do you think I received a single email, letter, viral video or other
informational contact from Cingular that it was available?
Nope.
That's a pretty piss poor sales endeavour for a technology that probably had
more than several million dollars invested in the upfront technical
implementation.
And just to make sure I wasn't the only one who didn't receive something from
the sales team at Cingular I asked the other 50 people in the room....1 guy
said he saw something once - so 49 to 1 for no sales calls. Probably why you
are on target for your 2% adoption rate.
Now for the next point about revenue share.
Everyone marvels at Doccomo i-mode and says that it's purely a Japanese
'phenomenon' with the successful adoption of broadband mobile data and a full
and exciting ecosystem of content providers and application developers.
Bullshit.
The reason Doccomo is highly successful and the USA carriers are crying poor is
because Doccomo isn't greedy and they made a smart commercial decision that all
content providers/application developers get to keep 90% of all billing revenue
(and I mean all, regardless of how big or small you are).
Yep you read that right, USA
you keep 20-30% - Japan
you keep 90%. And yet they wonder why the USA lags in mobile application and
mobile content development.
When I was consulting to Traction
Platform last year helping them expand into the USA I met with some people
from Verizon and they asked...how come Australia is smaller and so far ahead in
SMS marketing, my reply was well you make it so difficult and expensive to
implement in the USA what do you expect. Their answer was well we need to cover
costs, not understanding the laws of supply and demand lower barriers to entry
and there will be more users to cover the costs....It's not rocket science I
swear.
Ok Finally to 2D codes.
So this was the area of MobileCampNYC2 that I was most interested in
participating in. last year it was SMS marketing and talking about the Traction
Platform but this year it was the area I wanted to see most what was going on.
Some interesting sessions mainly from individuals but check out people like
Brian House at http://www.knifeandfork.org/
who had 2 amazing projects (and makes a living from artistic commissions and
commercial consulting).
Pretty much what I did see confirmed my understanding that 2d codes are a
fractured market with many different open source and private versions.
QR codes as you already know is the leading open standard. Denso who developed
the technology were smart in the in the 80's they released all rights to the
technology and allowed anyone to adopt this technology without patents or
licensing. (in fact check out smart companies like http://www.winksite.com/ that incorporate
automatic encoding into their application).
It was good to understand why the various closed/private 2d code companies felt
their way was better, mainly around size of the output code (check out www.cognation.net/contact as an
example QR code with a very big vcf file) and the ability to operate with older
mobile camera lens .
Totally understandable however the rep from Nextcode decided to push the
limits...a lot, and basically said that QR codes would never work and that the
only way for widespread adoption was to for everyone to come together and agree
on a standard and that the sooner everyone gave up on QR codes the better.
His comments around the reason QR codes wouldn't succeed was there needed to be
a central 'clearing house'. That Nextcode was the technology to move forward
with and that without this revenue stream any 2d code was doomed to fail.
Unfortunately this is where I decided to poke the bear.
As some of you know I have a long history with the Asterisk open source technology.
One of the reasons this now fantastic software is one of the most widely
adopted pieces of open source software is good stewardship. Digium whilst a
commercial company has been masterfully guided through it's embryonic years by
Mark Spencer and now during it's growth years by Danny Windham.
The reason Asterisk has bloomed when a number of similar closed and open source
technologies have failed is that from the very beginning Mark Spencer stated
Digium was NOT required in order to implement Asterisk.
Yes they made money if you purchased their cards but if you used a competitors
card like Sangnoma then it would work just as well. (in fact probably less than
half of the 60,000 Asterisk pabx's globally use Digium cards.
By giving up this 'choke point' Digium is now responsible for a far bigger pie.
I also provided the example of Salesforce.com and the statements made by Mark
Benioff and the Sforce ecosystem 2 years ago where no one believe he/Salesforce
was going to be just one small partner and that it was open for everyone to
participate.
I'm not sure if Nextcode felt I was taking the mickey out of him and
antagonising him or being serious, he suggested we take this offline but I didn't
hear back from him...(offer is still there)...so I assume they are off to file
another patent and spend more money suing other closed/private 2d bar code
companies like ScanBuy (who were in the session but kept a low profile in the
back).
My take on it is this, yes the older camera phones don't have the resolution
required but wait 6-12 months. With an average replacement rate of handsets in
the USA of 18 months, 80% of the market will have 2mb+ camera phones by the
mid/end of 2008.
There was also a lengthy discussion about advertising agencies and QR marketing
campaigns and ondeck readers versus post installation adoption rates but that
is a discussion for another time - I'm always happy to come in and run 4 hour
workshops for advertising agencies to understand why you don't need to wait.
Finally a quick thank you for the organisers Indira, Ritwik, Andy, Alexis,
David, Jose etc. Without you their would be no meeting of the minds and
exchanges of ideas so to you my biggest thanks.
Looking forward to peoples comments, I'm sure there will be more than a few for
this post.
Regards,
Dean Collins
Cognation Pty Ltd
de...@cognation.net
+1-212-203-4357
+61-2-9016-5642 (Sydney
in-dial).
MobileCampNYC
Yes, Chicago would be a great place to create a MobileCamp. Do you have pointers to active members of the local mobile community?
Best wishes,
Alexis
Email: mobile...@gmail.com
Dean Collins
Will this finally be the turning point for QR code adoption in the USA? http://www.google.com/adwords/printads/ads/barcode
BTW I never heard back from any of the 3 advertising agencies who talk to me at MobileCamp about coming in to run the 4 hour QR code workshop……..will you be reading this and in 2 years be wondering…why didn’t I implement this to my clients at the time.