Read on for more details:

Dan and James are doing it again:

Are you having trouble making it to MWC? Have you decided to say ‘BALLS!’ to Barcelona?

Do you have a slight obsession with all things cellular?

THEN JOIN US FOR BEERS AND GENERAL MOBILE MERRIMENT ON THURSDAY MARCH 1st 2012

We’ve got the upstairs at the All Bar One on New Oxford Street booked, but if we over do it we can just flood the ENTIRE PUB with mobile folk and have a jolly good time.

Spread the word – #NotatMWC

The Facebook event page is right here.

We’re moving inexorably towards February and MWC. If you’re heading to Barcelona, one of the important things you’ll need to give some thought to is what to do in the evenings. Although you may initially feel like going back to your hotel and collapsing, that’s not an option during MWC-week. There’s so much to do — especially and perhaps most importantly, networking!

So take note: OpenMarket, one of the planet’s leading providers of messaging and mobile transaction services, has announced it’s party. They’ve sensibly chosen the Tuesday night — that’s historically a good night for parties. Everyone’s arrived, the crazy press conferences are out of the way and folk should be reasonably relaxed and ready to network.

They’ve booked C3 Bar just nearby Placa Catalunya and Las Ramblas (to get your bearings).

They’re hosting the event with the magnificent team at Mobile Entertainment so if you’d like to RSVP, get the details here. But be very quick indeed!

Expect to be rubbing shoulders with the industry’s top folks:

The combined reach of OpenMarket and Mobile Entertainment will ensure that everyone from ­ games, music, apps, social media, advertising, m-commerce and more ­ will be there.

It will be an unmissable opportunity to catch up with partners, suppliers, clients and friends in the middle of mobile’s biggest week.

Hotwire are MWC legends. Much of the video footage you might have seen from MWC over the years has been thanks to some serious efforts on the part of the Hotwire team moving heaven and earth to sort out logistics to enable me to get some of their client executives on camera. It’s all a bit of a rush during those 3-4 key days and rarely does everything go exactly to plan. Which is why preparation is absolutely key, especially if you’re new to MWC — or if you haven’t yet had the responsibility of managing your CEO’s expectations when he’s expecting you to deliver a sit-down 3-hour fire side chat with a chap from the Financial Times — with 10 minutes notice. And when all he’s got to talk about is a 0.8 product revision.

Oh it’s a stressful time for the PRs. I do my best to get organised as quickly as I can and get the meetings in the diary. And I do my best to try and work with as many PRs and companies as possible during that week.

There are some really smart techniques that you can deploy as a marketer/public relations person. If you happen to know the journalist or blogger in question (and Hotwire do), then you can style the news and announcements to their exact requirements. For instance, I much prefer capturing output on video. I don’t *like* sit down interviews at MWC where I have to take notes, because the chances are I’ll be running a massive sugar low — and can’t write fast enough.

If you’ve got that kind of media knowledge then the chances on getting better, faster or higher quality coverage are so much greater. THIS is the sort of thing the Hotwire team will be discussing at their reception. It’s all informal though. No presentations, no speeches. Just good company, a keen topic and a bit of food & drink.

By the way, in terms of sugar lows, did you know that Rafe Blandford of All About Symbian and All About Windows Phone stuffs his laptop bag with Mars Bars at Heathrow Airport prior to coming to MWC? I thought it was hilarious until I found myself starving running from interview to interview. Rafe’s offer of a Mars Bar kept me going. Now I do the same. BUT. And this is a big but… why don’t you think about doing similar with your press briefings? For instance, last year I arrived to film one of Hotwire’s clients and Annette from their team asked if I’d like a coke from the bar of their client’s stand. Yes. Yes please. It might sound a bit trite or a bit irrelevant, but that sort of thing really can help a blogger/journalist along. These are the sorts of tips I’m getting into order for the reception — I shall be there to vent forth on my viewpoints if you’d like to listen.

Please do consider coming along.

The reception is taking place on the 25th of January 2012 from 6-830pm at Zebrano Bar, 18 Greek Street, Soho, W1D 4DS. If you’d like to come, please simply drop a note to Fiona Stevens (fiona.stevens@hotwirepr.com) to RSVP or give her a call on 020 7608 4697.

But if you’re part of the marketing effort at a mobile company, the chances are you’re working all this week — even if you’re on a ski slope somewhere. You’re working in your mind! Or, panicking professionally — about Mobile World Congress (“MWC”).

It’s a big, big event — the biggest in the calendar for much of the Western world and beyond.

I’d like to invite you to discuss your marketing and public relations activities with me at a pre-MWC reception next month (i.e. late January). It’s being hosted by the team at Hotwire PR (old pros when it comes to MWC). The event is targeted at anyone who’s currently planning their media outreach and who might like to pick a few brains. Hotwire are one of those firms who do MWC very, very well. I have first hand experience as I’ve done what feels like hundreds of interviews with their clients over the years.

Hotwire kindly invited me to attend the event to answer any last minute queries from a blogger/media perspective. I’ve got a lot of views on this topic having been to MWC many, many times — and had some rather (needlessly) stressful interview experiences.

Please do consider coming along.

The reception is taking place on the 25th of January 2012 from 6-830pm at Zebrano Bar, 18 Greek Street, Soho, W1D 4DS. If you’d like to come along, please drop a note to Fiona Stevens (fiona.stevens@hotwirepr.com) to RSVP or give her a call on 020 7608 4697.

Please do pass this note on to any of your colleagues who are quietly sitting in the corner of your office this week stressing about MWC!

Midem is coming in January. It’s the music industry’s premier connected event and it takes place in Cannes, France, every year. If you’re working on something mobile-music related (or “connected” music), then I strongly, strongly recommend you consider attending the event. You’ll meet almost 7,000 other folk.

Don’t just buy a ticket though. Get in touch with the organisers and find out how you might be able to get involved, whether it’s participating in their hackathon or speaking on a panel. I know the team there so if you’d like an introduction, please let me know. Indeed, if you’d like to submit a paper, you can submit a paper for consideration — although I think it’s getting quite late now.

If you’re a startup, there’s a special €495 ticket price (or €295 for students and artists). Otherwise it’s €795 if you book in advance (or an extra €100 on the door).

Some key reasons for attending:

• Source music content
• Benchmark your technology and business model
• Showcase and sell your latest products, services and solutions
• Raise funds from an international community of investors
• Be visible among the global music ecosystem
• Develop deals & partnerships with artists & brands

Make the decision soon though as hotel rooms will get booked up.

I just looked the trip up on Expedia and I’m astonished to report that you can stay at the Intercontinental in Cannes (including return flights from London Luton on EasyJet) for just £635! Or consider the Mercure near the beach — that’s just £298 for the hotel and flights!

Charms & Pendants: charms,
Earrings: gold and silver earrings,
Rings: Diamond Rings,
Birthstones Jewelry: Birthstones by month.

If my schedule will allow it, I’ll definitely be popping along to see what’s moving from a mobile perspective — so I might see you there!

There’s a rather interesting event taking place this Friday at Battersea Power Station in London. It’s billed as day for developers and entrepreneurs to get together to celebrate how much the individual can active in today’s tech industry.

When I think about it, things have changed dramatically than when I really got stuck into the world of business back in the late 90s. The ‘connectedness’ that we all enjoy almost automatically nowadays thanks to the internet just simply wasn’t there decades ago. It was next to impossible to connect with the right people quickly and easily. Witness, for example, the entrepreneurial exploits documented (and executed) by the likes of Tim Ferris: Come up with an idea on Friday night, source/develop the product on Saturday morning, stick it on Google (i.e. Google ads) on Sunday morning and turn over a million dollars in 30 days. It’s those kind of concepts that were totally unrealistic years ago.

Now, though, through the power of one… well, it’s doable. It’s possible.

There are so many services available nowadays that, when harnessed correctly, really can enable one person to orchestrate a whole business with just a four-hour-work-week. Anyone who’s followed a little of Mr Ferris will know what I’m on about. If you’re curious, check out his book.

Services like elance, odesk and 99designs put labour and expertise front-and-centre, manageable at a click. Indeed, it’s no longer a click. It’s most likely a few taps on a smartphone or an iPad. Indeed, get it right and ‘work’ means a few taps from your sun lounger in the Maldives most days.

There’s quite a lot of rose-tinting going on in the previous paragraphs — but my key point (and, I think the key message with the Power of One event) is that there’s so much less friction nowadays for a single individual out to get things done.

The speaker list is looking absolutely fantastic: Jason Calacanis, Sam Ramji, David McCandless, Charles Arthur, Yosi Taguri, Richard Kramer, Elizabeth Varley and Morten Lund.

The event tickets are a highly reasonable £99+VAT. You can pick them up here. I’ll see you there!

Have a read of this:

According to Max Wi-Fi, 989GB of data was transferred over the four days across nearly 5,000 devices. Of these, 85 per cent were iPhones and iPads. The public Wi-Fi provided at the show accounted for nearly 70 per cent of all data transferred, while the remainder was transferred over exhibitor and production networks. On average, 6.5MB of data was transferred per second.

via Wi-Fi users chalk up 1TB at London Frieze Art Fair | Exhibition News.

Now. We’re not talking about some all-singing, all-dancing tech show. No, this was at an art event! Impressive.

And you know what, I don’t blame those iPhone/iPad users. If there’s a fast connection made available, I’d rather use that than my patchy 3G service.

NB: Good work Max WiFi.

There’s a whole community of stakeholders. Thankfully, someone’s put a steak in the ground and said, let’s fix it. Or, at least, let’s discuss it, let’s look at some ways ahead and see what can be done to make things better for everyone.

This story at Exhibition News outlines what’s going on. If you’re a vendor or operator, I strongly recommend getting in touch with the organisers. If you need an introduction, drop me a note — I’ve been doing a bit of work with the team at Reed Exhibitions.

The meeting of 28 delegates at Reed Exhibitions’ offices in Richmond follows discussions on LinkedIn that led to a meeting at the Event and Exhibiting Show in July and now a working group exploring how to improve Wi-Fi connectivity on the show floor.

“This began as a discussion on Reeds Ops LinkedIn Group and seems to have struck a chord with all parties within theindustry,” Reed Exhibitions operations director Piers Kelly said. “Technology will become an increasingly important part of exhibitions and we need to have reliable, available and cost-effective solutions to providing Wi-Fi irrespective of size of event or location.”

Just in case you think it’s a non-issue, consider this rather delicious fact from a related Exhibition News post:

According to Max Wi-Fi, the wireless provider for the recent London Art Frieze Fair, attendees transferred nearly 1TB of data during the four-day event.

(85% of devices connected during the event were iPhones and iPads!)

Anyway for those who’ve got a place, you should hopefully have confirmation now or today — I’ll see you there!

I’m in the States for almost two weeks now. The first event I’m attending is the Mobile Commerce Forum here in Houston. Then I hop on a plane to visit WHITE SPACE, the invite-only summit focusing on all aspects of popular culture (of which mobile is playing an increasingly important part) and then I’m on to San Francisco next week for BlackBerry DevCon Americas.

I wanted to put a quick note out for those reading in New York — do you fancy coming along to WHITE SPACE? It’s looking like a seriously interesting event. I think I agreed to host a panel / table discussion so, instead of just sitting at the back and observing, I’m going to have to drink quite a bit of Diet Coke and get stuck in. Bring it on.

I know the organisers of the summit so if you think it might be of use, I reckon we might be able to swing a free ticket for some MIR readers. Drop me a note (ewan@mobileindustryreview.com) if you can make it to New York this Thursday. Diet cokes are on me!

As a reminder, here’s the overview:

WHITE SPACE, an exclusive invitation-only summit tailored to influencers and decision makers who help shape the direction of the business of popular culture, will take place on the afternoon of Thursday, October 13 at the Javits Center just hours before the doors open for New York Comic Con 2011. Conceived as a think tank for 100 masters and innovators in the fields of TV, film, comics, games, technology and advertising, WHITE SPACE is not a traditional conference, but is designed to foster open, transparent discussion between industry leaders. It will be kicked off by brief talks from three masters of media followed by small group discussions led by influential moderators.

WHITE SPACE executives will open this year’s event by describing plans for 2012 which call for a continuation of high-level discussion along with exhibits of the technology which is driving so much transformation in the pop culture universe.

It’s Ewan here, live from Houston, Texas. I’m at the Hilton Americas hotel in downtown Houston where the Mobile Commerce Forum is taking place over the next three days.

I arrived in time to take in the opening of the exhibition element of the conference. I had a super time walking around the various stands saying hello, asking questions and learning as much as I could about M-Commerce. I like to think I’m pretty hot on the medium but I have to admit I’ve already had my mind expanded just walking around the show.

I’ve taken business cards and I’ll be following up with some of the companies I’ve met to do some Q&A interviews and features.

Tomorrow the conference begins in earnest — early, too — so I’m going to get some rest now. But standby for a series of reports around the topic of M-Commerce over the next few days.

One of the most valuable events I attended last year was the MEF Americas event. The content was simply outstanding — especially for someone like me with a European outlook. The focus was obviously on ‘Americas’ but not just the usual suspects (i.e. West Coast America). I met and interviewed dozens of executives from some of the largest Latin American firms and came away rather excited about the prospects of the region.

If you’d like to connect with leading players in Latin America, I strongly recommend taking a look at the event.

The event takes place on November 29th & 30th in balmy Miami at the rather iconic Fontainbleu Hotel (they have iMacs in their hotel rooms, I kid ye not). This week you can save $200 on the ticket cost — but this early bird registration finishes on Friday.

All the details you need are at www.mefamericas.com.

(By the way, you can see some of the interviews I filmed at MEF Americas 2010 here.)

Are you heading down to the Mobile Marketing Assocition’s Forum London 2011 next week? It’s taking place on the 4th-5th of October (Tuesday & Wednesday) and is looking to be a rather exciting event. It’s the MMA’s largest event in Europe and there are speakers from brands including Unilever, Coca-Cola, BBC, Debenhams, JetBlue, Marks & Spencer, NHL and Mahou-San Miguel.

I’m hosting a panel debate on the issue of personalisation vs privacy — quite a contentious one:

Panel Debate: Personalisation versus Privacy

Nothing rouses great debate in the mobile world right now than the use of consumer data. Some argue that understanding customers better through collecting personal data will make it more possible to create a better approach for both brand and consumer. While others believe that too much data is held without consumer knowledge. In this panel leading thinkers on both sides of the divide put their case forward and then debate the issues.

Moderator:

Ewan MacLeod
Mobile Industry Review

Panelists:

Simon Andrews
Founder
addictive

Chris Bourke
Managing Director
Mobext

Thomas Labarthe
Vice President of Mobile Advertising
Alcatel-Lucent

Alex Meisl
Chairman
Sponge Group

A contentious topic deserves some spirited debate so I’ll be working hard to make sure we achieve that. I don’t think it’ll be difficult, frankly, given the quality of the panelists. Bring it on.

Now then if you’re thinking about coming along, I strongly recommend you get yourself a ticket *this* week rather than next week as prices rise by 15% on Sunday night. Ultra last minute isn’t the way to go. If you represent a brand, you can get a ticket for just £200. MMA members pay £995, whilst non-members, well it’s £1,295 or £1,489 ‘on the door’. Get thee to the registration site today.

Do have a look at the full agenda.

The Senior Market Mobile 2011 event is taking place tomorrow in central London. I very much enjoyed the event last year — alas a scheduling conflict on my end is preventing me from going at the moment (although there might be a last minute change there!)

I’m delighted to say that if you were thinking of going along to see the best and the brightest serving the senior mobile industry in the United Kingdom and beyond, then you can — completely free of charge! All you need to do is mention “MIR” (i.e. Mobile Industry Review”) at the registration desk and they’ll send you straight through.

There is one caveat: This will ONLY happen after 2.30pm. If you want the morning too, you’ll need to pay. That’s fair enough I think.

The senior mobile marketplace is buzzing with an estimated 10 million folk about to arrive into this category in the next few years — so if you’d like to learn more and do a good bit of networking, I strongly recommend popping along.

The event is being held just up the road from Oxford Circus tube station at the Royal Institute of British Architects, 66 Portland Place, London W1B 1AD.

Enjoy!

Update: Sorry, you can only get free entry after 2.30pm (I originally wrote that it was midday!)

I spoke last year at the Senior Market Mobile 2010 event. I really enjoyed the event and found it simply fascinating to discover the almost completely unfulfilled needs of the world’s elderly citizens.

It’s actually a huge market, especially in the UK where so many ‘connected seniors’ have a decent amount of disposable income.

The solution is not to give them all an iPhone or an iPad.

When you’ve got fingers, limbs and eyes ravaged by time, you need a bit of thought from your mobile and service designers. Buttons need to be positioned correctly, screen displays need to be arranged for the right contrast and so on.

I learnt a lot last year — this year, I suspect the event is going to be even better.

It’s taking place next Tuesday (20th September) at the Royal Institute of British Architects in Portland Place, just up the road from Oxford Circus tube.

I very much like the ‘Dragons Den’ concept. At 2pm on the day, Jon Bentley will be moderating a panel of seniors who will give their views on what they’d like to see. That alone is well worth the visit.

Tickets are £349 each — but do look out for the 3-for-1 special that includes a Binatone Android tablet!

One of the best conferences in mobile applications is taking place toward the end of this month. I’m pretty disappointed to not be able to make it.

It’s obviously taking place in San Francisco — where else, but the centre of the mobile applications world?

Last year, the inaugural APPNATION was thoroughly well received and this year, it looks like the organisers have made it even better. The speaking roster is a regular Who’s Who in mobile apps. Jeff Scott of 148Apps. Mike Rowehl, Carlo Longino, Tim Chang — those are just some of the names who pop out immediately for me (i.e. I know they’re good).

Vijay Chattah of VSC Consulting is leading one track on App Marketing Do’s and Donts. Then Noah Kravitz of Technobuffalo is talking app stores — I’d go to APPNATION just to see each of these chaps speak.

The discussion is set to be fascinating. It’s painful reading the agenda because I can see just what I will be missing. Jonathan from Nielsen will set the scene with his keynote. Then Trip Hawkins of Digital Chocolate will deliver the opening address, then it’s on to discussion about the app economy, then the App Rockstars take to the stage… yup. If you’re in the Valley or if you can get to the Valley, I recommend taking some time out to go along.

Now then, if you’re quick, you can still qualify for a massive 30% discount on entry if you use the code AMIR30 at checkout. But do be quick. Here’s the registration link.

The event is taking place on the 27th-28th April.

The venue has space for an absolute maximum of 80 people and right now just over 180 people have asked for a place.

I’ve already committed to the venue so I can’t easily change that. I think we clearly need to aim for a bigger venue next time. This time, however, we’ll need to strictly control numbers because of the venue licensing — the venue team simply will not allow more than 80 downstairs.

We’ve been gong through the list of requests and evaluating them. If you’ve asked for +1 (or, in one case, +6) I’m afraid there just ins’t the space to enable that!

Krystal is aiming to send out email confirmations tomorrow.

I used my Apple Air and did the recording from the office here in Paris. Then I took a few questions from the audience.

Here we go:

I’ll aim to do a few more of these kind of live videos — if you’d like notification of when they’re going to occur, pleasedo follow me on Twitter: @ew4n

Each company will be pitching on the Wednesday session in the Hotel Majestic. All things being equal, I will be there to cheer them on — and to get them on camera if possible.

Here are the finalists:

CamUp

CamUp is changing the digital entertainment landscape; revolutionizing how people interact with each other and how they enjoy and share media content. Users are transformed from passive spectators to active participants, on CamUp people become media.

CamUp offers unrivalled interaction within groups of people: users can create virtual rooms together with their friends in which to upload and embed any multimedia content including audio, pictures, and videos. They can consume content together in real time, play multiplayer games, and simultaneously interact via chat and webcams. Rooms can be customized and preloaded by companies, and offer an ideal platform for social interactive transmedia content.

Cognik

CogniK provides innovative solutions to help media companies monetize existing content catalogues and audiences. At CogniK, we have built the next-generation content discovery solutions. More screens get connected and piles of professional content are available online, ready for monetization. Media and Telecom companies need to be able to provide a seamless experience to
their users when accessing content. Navigating huge catalogues of videos on the tiny screen of a smartphone or with the 5 keys of a TV remote control is not an option.
Media and telecom companies create personalized TV channels from existing catalogues of on-demand branded content and take into account personal preferences and social recommendations to dynamically re-create the well known linear experience of a broadcast channel on any connected screen

Fairplay Interactive

Fair Play Interactive developed the Younicast™ IPTV/Cable TV/OTT platform, which allows the distribution of 100% PERSONALIZED and interactive LINEAR TV channels. Driving the on-going transition from audience to CRM: The Younicast™ platform paves the way to user-centric TV channels freed from all schedule constraints, 100% personalized and interactive, auto-adapting to the TV viewer’s liking, mood and availability, and not the other way round. Younicast™ provides a disruptive innovation without disrupting consumers TV habits, preserving the natural semi-passive couch potato consumption of the TV medium

Futurecode

An Augmented Reality publishing first. The story of The Dibidogs – already familiar to many television viewers – has now been retold in a unique book form. Rocky, Emmie and their canine buddies pursue a thrilling adventure in this vividly-illustrated book.

In an exciting new revelation, the book contains interactive 3D animations. Pointing a webcam at markers on the pages produces 3D Dibidogs figures that pop out of the book. The characters welcome readers to places familiar from the TV show. By moving the camera, the user can make the dogs jump, roll over or move on to the next stage of the story.

With augmented reality, print and digital industries are becoming one, for the first time in history. This makes the format extremely attractive to media companies with both TV and print operations.

Hit Me Baby
Hit Me Baby is a music creation and collaboration platform that allows users to write hit songs with successful artists and share them virally. It is a full media property comprising smartphone and tablet app, website, social game, TV format and live event.

Hit Me Baby uses its propriety, extremely sharable, scalable, digital tool to reach critical mass via social networks. By employing participation from superstar artists it engages audiences and drives music consumption. It will also serve as a digital business platform for artists and will develop into a fully immersive social gaming experience that can be accessed across the web, mobile, TV & tablet devices

Hitlantis

Hitlantis unites music lovers and great unsigned music with the best content discovery currently available on the web. Hitlantis’ action map shows clearly who’s hot and who’s recently just
entered the game and where’s the most buzz going on.

Browsing new music in Hitlantis is almost like browsing real physical products in a records store – Internet’s never offered that before! Bands may use Hitlantis for free to be found easier than
ever before, and should they want to participate in great competitions to win live gigs, studio time and record company pitching they can opt out to premium service. Hitlantis.com – who’s next?

Invideous

Invideous are interactive video specialists focused on video monetization and increasing social engagement with video. The business has a strong commercial focus with experience and products spanning both ad-funded and pay-per-view content monetization.

Invideous launched an in-video pay-wall product in 2010 which works on a cross-platform basis and allows publishers to easily charge for their video content. They also have a class-defining hotspot-based ad format and pre-roll ad middleware platform.

SocialView, the company’s suite of social tools actively drive traffic to a publisher’s content and then increase engagement rates once the user is there.

Jakaa

Jakaa is a social entertainment media dedicated to television and based on live commenting of TV shows and programs. When connected on Jakaa, you can know what your friends are watching and choose to comment publicly or privately. Jakaa also enhances the TV experience through games and animations related to live events, on any show or network.

Jakaa provides a conversational platform around a single subject: live TV. It creates a live feedback source and can provide a way for shows or networks to engage their audience and improve their loyalty to a show. Jakaa aims to create a reference on the second screen (laptop, smartphone, tablet next to the TV) for a majority of web/TV users in Europe.

Lorenzi TV

Sports coverage in most countries is limited to very few sports (or every 4 years during the Olympics). In France, TV networks focus on football, rugby and major championships. In October 2010, we launched the first live on-demand web sports TV and produce and broadcast every sport abandoned by TV. We offer one of the best image quality online, a pay-per-view system and the possibility to tweet and share with friends on Facebook. The offer is completely legal as we buy rights for every sport we broadcast. To date, we are the official media partner of the following professional championships in France: Volleyball, Basketball, Waterpolo, Synchronized Swimming and Boxing … and many more to come.

Mediabong

Mediabong is a professional online video marketplace and video advertising, optimization solutions provider. It gathers producers & content owners, web publishers and brands/agencies.

Mediabong provides them with two solutions:
- Video sponsoring based on “brand values”
– Allows brands to search for professional online video corresponding to their values
- Syndication of the content on publishers’ network.

These solutions provide each stakeholder with what it looks for:
- Content protection & extra revenues for producers
- Professional content and revenues for publishers
- Quality content+automatic matching values+audience+metrics for brands/agencies

Stupeflix

Stupeflix develops a platform to enable video creation. It comes in two flavors, a web application for people and an API for developers. We came up with a model for designing video scenes that is simple enough for beginners to use instinctively, but allows the creation of sophisticated video clips that are rendered in realtime.

Stupeflix enables consumers to express themselves through video, and publishers to automatically turn their content into beautiful video animations, effortlessly creating TV-like channels that are fed in real-time with their web content as it changes.

Good luck everyone! There’s more information here on CC Ventures here.

Here are my slides from this Monday’s presentation at The Big M mobile event in Bath:

Update: The slides made the ‘spotlight’ section of Slideshare — thanks to the editors there!

Congratulations to Mike and Chris, the chaps behind The Big M conference held this week in Bath. They did a phenomenal job pulling together what surely has to be the city’s largest ever tech event (there were over 200 tickets sold).

I’d never been to Bath before — what a lovely, pleasant place it was. Just an hour-and-a-bit from London Paddington, surrounded by rolling hills and blessed with some phenomenal architecture, I’m looking forward to going back soon.

There’s a thriving creative and technical hub around the city and it was most definitely in evidence during the event. I met some magnificent people working on some very interesting concepts — from Gelato to mobile event networking to uber-sexy RFID projects.

The event was held over two days (a conference on the Monday and a workshop on the Tuesday). I unfortunately missed the second day as I had to rush off to Paris.

Touchnote’s Raam Thakrar delivered a very straight forward message to developers: If you class yourself as a decent mobile developer and you’re not earning at least £65,000 a year, change, modify, stop. I think that statement will resonate highly with a lot of people in the mobile development space.

Aral Balkan had everyone laughing with disbelief at some ridiculous user interface experiences. That’s Aral’s bag — he’s a designer, developer — but his focus appears to be heavily based around helping humans interact with technology. He made some phenomenal points about simplicity — unfortunately, most of them completely (and I do mean, completely) ignored by the vast majority of the mobile marketplace. With the exception of Apple obviously.

I didn’t manage to catch Bruce Lawson’s presentation as I was back at the hotel working away on my presentation. I talked to some of the other delegates who very much appreciated a fundamental reminder of the capabilities of HTML5 and mobile. It’s not all about the walled garden.

I popped back into the Komedia venue just as the panel session held by Vodafone’s Dan Appelquist was coming to an end. Immediate feedback from the chaps I sat down next to was: More, more, more — I can understand why. Dan had assembled a panel of excellent speakers. I know both Sanyu Kiruluta (of RIM) and Terence Eden (of WAC) and highly rate them — so alongside the other panelists, I’m sure it was most definitely thought-provoking.

I then did my presentation.

Then Paul Golding got up to talk Future Innovations. (I am particularly impressed that he has insisted his children, aged 11 & 13 if memory serves, never, ever get a ‘job’. Good policy that, I think, for the next generation.) Paul’s presentation was utterly critical for any mobile startups thinking about how they develop their business. Paul works with o2 and briefly mentioned their Twilio-like service that I really must take a look at.

I’ll be uploading my slides in just a few moments. In my presentation I was pretty critical about mobile operators in general — however one thing I should have said is well done — well down to the sponsors of The Big M, namely:

- Vodafone (Developers)
- BlueVia
- Nokia

I’m delighted they took the time to come down to Bath to talk to the attendees — and that had the foresight to support the event in the first place. Good work!

Just a quick reminder about Qualcomm’s Uplinq conference. It’s being held on the 1st-2nd of June in San Diego. I was there last year and found it a phenomenally interesting event. Given Qualcomm’s immense involvement in the mobile world nowadays, Uplinq can only get more interesting this year.

I remember being particularly astounded by the company’s medical advances (little pills that you swallow, with integrated camera and transmitter, anyone?) and their Mirasol screen display technology.

If you’re looking to do business with any one of the Qualcomm business units, definitely consider Uplinq. Almost everyone who matters at Qualcomm is there — and their executives are all ultra keen to meet.

Register by the end of this month and you’ll get a 20% discount.

Normally when talking about The Big M around here, it refers to MacLeod, but this time we’re talking about something a little different.

Ewan is off to Bath on Monday to speak at the very cool, very exciting Big M conference.

His topic? The State of the Mobile Union. He’s like our very own Obama.

According to what we’ve heard,

The Big M is a developer-focused, independent conference for people who want to learn from and connect with the very best people working in mobile today.

Now that sounds very, very cool.

Check out their site here, and if you can, GET THERE!

If you’d like to present a panel or a session, *now* is the time to get in touch with the organisers. Here are the subjects they are looking for people to discuss:

- BlackBerry® Tablet OS
- Adobe® Flash® and Adobe® Air®
- BlackBerry® Java® SDK 6.0
- BlackBerry Services (including Payment Service, Advertising Service, BlackBerry® Push Service, and more)
- Business Success and Case Studies (share your app development, B2C commercialization or internal deployment lessons learned)
- Other Developer Tools and Platforms
- BlackBerry Native C/C++
- BlackBerry® WebWorks™ application
- BlackBerry Web Development
- Multimedia
- Security
- Super Apps
- User Interface & User Experience

The deadline is April 1st so do get stuck in. This is the link for more information.

The Unlimited Drinks concept is quite different from your standard networking event.

First, it’s managed. By that I mean, there’s a service level. There are no — and this is a technical term — knobs. There are no sub-standard arses. No. That’s because I strictly control the guest list. You need to be somebody in mobile to come along. I define ‘somebody in mobile’ as having an opinion. If you can’t list your top three mobile apps off the top of your head, you don’t qualify. If you ‘don’t know what phone you have,’ then you don’t qualify.

But if you’ve got an opinion. If you’ve got something to add. If you’re working IN the mobile industry, or if you’re working in a market serving the mobile industry (PR, marketing, legal, design and so on), then that’s fine.

The fundamental concept about the event is that once you’re in, you CAN actually talk to other people. Because they are there to meet you. To find out what you’re doing, to make suggestions, to connect you to their network, to see if they can do business with you.

The other things with Unlimited Drinks is that I’m buying. I buy the drinks. Now, my wife was less than impressed when I started doing these events. Although she did come along with some of her friends to a few of them, the fact they used to cost £5,000 a time used to — understandably — get up her nose. You can buy some pretty nice sofas for £5k. In fairness, a sofa doesn’t quite count as a business expense.

One of the most entertaining aspects of an Unlimited Drinks event was enforcing a strict fair use policy for any mobile operator attendees, just temporarily, just to see their faces. You have to admit, it is just a little funny.

It’s time we started some more Unlimited Drinks events. Now, as I said, delivering truly unlimited drinks typically costs £5k. I am not going to do that, alas. I’ll need to do a T-Mobile and change the terms. Instead I propose buying the first drink for everyone. It’s that or get a sponsor — and now and again, that has worked nicely. My view with a sponsored event is that you either do unlimited drinks (open bar) or not at all. No arsing about with tokens, wrist bands or the like.

Your help needed

Now then, I’d like your suggestions on what we should do. I’m thinking of a much more intimate Unlimited Drinks — instead of 250-300 people, perhaps just 45-50, so that you really do get a chance to meet. What do you think of that?

I’ll need to find a good location too — it has to be central London (although I think it’s high time we went back to Tel Aviv, Los Angeles, San Francisco and the like once more). Do you have any recommendations of a central London / West End venue?

I’m also thinking about bringing the camera and possibly starting earlier so we can get some folk on camera before everyone appears for drinks and networking. I’d welcome your feedback on that too.

And if you’d like to get a sense of the Unlimited Drinks experience, here’s one of the old, old videos with an overview:

Update: I should point out that Unlimited Drinks is wholly inclusive. That is, from a guest list perspective, if you don’t know me, that’s not a problem. I just need to have a chat with you to establish you’re doing something of value in mobile (or the surrounding industries).

I hope we’ll have more dates up soon.