So here it is – at last – the first part of the presentation I gave in Finland for the first ever Nokia Open Lab.
There are three other parts available to view that I might post, depending on the feedback on this one…
So, what are you waiting for?
Feed back already!
No really, I have… It’s part one, (if you ignore my random posts from the weekend) of my uber-blogathon attempt to catch up with all my content from the past six weeks…
So, without further ado, here’s the first batch of footage that I’ve managed to throw together…
Hope you like it and, if you make it to the end…
The whole thing rocks in at about 11mins approx and it gets quite geeky in places 
…please leave a comment and let me know what you think.
What with this being my first proper attempt at this whole video-blogging malarky and y’know, all feedback is very, very welcome!
Here’s regular MIR contributor, James Whatley, in full swing at the Nokia event today:
Read and watch videos of the mothership event – aka ‘Nokia OpenLab’ right here.
It’s fast approaching…
- IT’S TONIGHT DAMMIT-
…and can you believe there is currently, at the time of writing, 119 people down as confirmed as coming?!
(don’t even ask me about the ‘maybes’)
Amazing.
Really.
I am completely and utterly overwhelmed.
Who’d have thought it huh?
It’s been just over a year since our very first meet-up way back when, upstairs in the Bricklayers Arms…
- Dodgy Lookin’ Bunch -
20 of us or so, all gathered round a table, drinking beer and coo-ing over the first generation iPhone.
What a sight we must have been.
From there Mobile Geeks of London, (or ‘MGoL‘ as it has become to be known) has gone from strength to strength. The MGoL facebook group is now 354 members strong and, as you can see – as time has gone on there has been a really lovely increase in the turnout for each event -
17 <> 61 <> 73 <>119
Just – awesome – really, really awesome
This year of course, also marked the first time we took MGoL: On Tour.
Starting (and ending – hehe) in Las Vegas and timed to coincide with the start of the CTIA Wireless Conference – MGoL, along with some help from the team at Brilliant Expos, set a new precendent in the history of the Mobile Geeks and laid down the template for any future events that take place under the ‘On Tour‘ banner. Of which, I can guarantee, there will be more coming soon… Watch this space.
So.. Here we are… Let’s do it shall we?
Ladies & Gentlemen… Presenting:
The Time: 6:45pm – 11:30pm
The Date: July 31st – Today!
The Place: All Bar One, New Oxford Street
Nearest Tube – Tottenham Court Road
Google Map: If You Must
“I don’t wanna buy it, I don’t wanna sell it; I just wanna play with it and use it…”
See you there folks!
About a year or so ago now, I was stuck in traffic on a bus going past Clapham Common, when I saw these three creatures walking across in the distance…
The first one, in at the front – was this guy dressed up as a green sea monster – a bit like a loch ness monster crossed with a dragon of some kind. Well, he had this outfit on and he couldn’t *really* see where he was going, so he kept going off course and wandering around all over the place.
The guy at the end was dressed as a hammerhead shark, with these two hand-painted boxes stuck to the side of his head. He looked awesome – all dressed in grey – it was clear what animal he was supposed to be. Anyway – he had this really long tail that restricted his walking somewhat… making him really slow.
In the middle – keeping order in all this chaos – was this small girl, in a big pink dress, holding a pink umbrella with tassles hanging off the sides… she was a jellyfish see. And back and forth she ran; at the front stopping the Dragon and pointing him in the right direction and then quickly back to the Shark again to pull/push him forward.
( they may’ve looked a bit like this )
For 20mins I watched this spectacle unfold in front of me, the whole time wearing a great big grin on this face of mine…
“Wonderful…” I thought “…Fancy Dress during the day, people don’t do that enough.”
Which is when I had the idea for The Fancy Dress Picnic –
The idea stayed in my head for a week or so before disappearing into the far reaching caverns of my brain… until it was discovered again.
This time prompted by watching the quite frankly awesome NZ film, Eagle vs Shark* – on a flight over to the US.
*if you haven’t seen it – this screen kinda gives you an idea why I might’ve been reminded of the picnic – our protaganists meet (properly) at a ‘come as your favourite animal’ party…
So yeah – thusly the idea arrived back in my head again – and this time I kept hold of it; kicking it around through Spring and eventually raising it again in a pub in Chiswick with some friends who all decided that it was a fantastic idea for a party and that we should organise it immediately to coincide with our friend Clare’s birthday at the end of July… (or as close to as we could get) …and so!
The Fancy Dress Picnic!
Date: Saturday August 2nd 2008
Place: Clapham Common
Time: 1pm ’til late (Roger’s working on getting some bar space for later, later
The Theme: Come as your favourite animal
You MUST MUST MUST RSVP with the name of your animal that you intend to come as.
The reason for this is to prevent embarrassing moments for all and sundry – I mean – you’ve worn the same dress as someone else before right?
Well.. can you imagine all of us turning up as cats?
That’d be rubbish.
You name it, you claim it.
Me? I’m going as a Hammerhead Blue Shark
I’ve setup a facebook event, Roger’s blogged about it and together we have been working *really hard* to get this crazy day off the ground…
At the time of writing we have 30(ish) confirmed guests – ALL coming as different animals!
And YOU are welcome to come and join us
If you ‘dont do’ facebook then simply leave a comment on this here blog:
The animals that have been taken read like this:
The rest of the animal kingdom is there for you to choose from.
Much love and maybe I’ll see you on Saturday
EDIT – - – -
Thanks to my awesome Mobilistic Skillz -
We now have all of the directions to the venue available on your Mobile!
All you gotta do is open your phone’s internet browser and type http://mippin.com/fancy
Directions are all right there – Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
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Here’s the Whatleydude’s overview of the Future of Mobile conference held yesterday in London.
Morning. Whatley here reporting live, or semi live, after the event. I was fortunate enough to attend Carsonified’s ‘Future of Mobile‘ – which was held at the simply huge BFI IMAX Cinema at Waterloo yesterday.
During the event I kept my notes on Jaiku – this was awesome because not only was I able to quickly capture soundbites and thoughts on the fly but my colleagues, peers and Jaiku buddies were also able to comment… the whole thread can be found here.
I’ve been trying to regurgitate most of the content into some kind of context to make it easier to consume.. but the more I try the more I struggle! So.. I’m just gonna crack on and do my best.
Right then – the schedule (along with more detail re: the speakers) for the day can be found here. And I believe that the slides from the days presentations can be found not far from there too.
Moving on….
First Speaker: Tony Fish – Cool.
I thought of Ewan especially when I heard him say something along the lines of “The assumption of what is available on the web is what is wanted on the mobile web.. ..is utter bollocks…” – Brilliant. Here’s a slide from Tony’s presentation:
See?! MASSIVE SLIDES!
The next thing he said that rang true with me is something I truly believe in – which is “The mobile web is NOT an extension of the Internet.” More on this later.
There was a kind of Mobile Web ‘Content Sandwich’ that made up the first part of the day.
So first, the meat of the sandwich: This came in the form of Luca Passani of Admob and Andrea Trasatti of dotMobi talking about how the Mobile Web should be and how they think it should be done… from an industry perspective.
And then – either side of these guys – (the sandwich bread – as it were) – Tony Fish and the ‘Content Panel’ (Prashant of Mippin standing out in particular) talking about how the Mobile Web IS and how it’s being used from a USER perspective. This sandwich method demonstrated – to me at least – how the there are so many different ways of trying to get to the same destination.
Luca Passani of Admob had his rant at Vodafone – Big Wow. NEXT!
Dan Appelquist of Vodafone told us about ‘one web’ (something which I’m still not convinced about – my opinion being that the mobile web and the moving interweb are two completely different creatures and should be treated thusly).
Andreas Trasatti of dotMobi discussed about ‘Best Practices’. I’ve had various conversations about dotMobi and have made no secret of my feelings about (what I see as) the futility of this domain – but… and this is a HUGE but – after having seen this presentation I understand now that it isn’t JUST about having a .mobi address. (I’m a firm believer in the ‘m.’ solution) It’s more about putting in rules and regulations to help make the mobile web a friendlier place for the user in the long term.
As Dan Appelquist explained to me recently, “It’s not the URL destination, it’s what it looks like when you get there.”
Charles McCathieNevile of Opera talked about web browsing and without a doubt, wins the Best Comment of the Day prize with his one liner about widgets: “Yeah, because I need another clock right?”
Brian Fling of Blue Flavour – “The iphone is the first Mobile 2.0 device”. Discuss!
Dave Burke of Google showed us some Android stuff – but I’m not a developer so, alas it made limited sense to me!
One thing that really stood out for me all day was that the conference was very focused on what was happening in mobile today. Whilst that’s useful to many, I, and I think a large majority of the delegates attended to find out more about the future. We were, I think, hoping for some insightful future-gazing viewpoints that didn’t quite materialise.
Tony Fish laid it out in his ‘parting thoughts’ when he commented:
“Don’t forget voice when thinking about mobile”.
A valid reminder when 99.9% of all mobile users use their phones primarily for VOICE. So let’s take Voice and see what we can do with it… *Cough* – SpinVox is Awesome – *cough* 
Unfortunately the conference was simply far too much about the Mobile Web. In fact, a recurring theme of conversation throughout the ‘networking breaks’ during the day was the fact that the event should’ve been more accurately labelled ‘An Introduction to the mobile web‘ not ‘The Future of Mobile‘.
This takes nothing away from the efforts of the FOM speakers and/or organisers.. it’s just a comment on something that promised so much but didn’t actually deliver. But hey.. the post-conference party was good!
Please leave any questions in the comments field below and I’ll reply accordingly…
Cheers!
“Do you consider yourself a mobile geek? Do you live, work or hang out in (or within easy reach of) London?
SMS Text News reader James Whatley has just launched a Facebook group called Mobile Geeks of London. It’s open to anyone (assuming you’ve got a Facebook account, of course), and promises chat, discussions, and general merriment.
To join up, just click this link. There’s rumours of the first group get-together in London this coming week – and if you ask James nicely he might bring his iPhone along.. 
