A short Yuletide note from MoMoLo towers
wishing everyone a Happy Christmas and hoping for a very successful New Year
all round. It's been quite a year for us, with our 11 or so events on topics as
wide ranging as "Big Data, Small Screen" and "Inclusive and
Accessible Design". The events
we've run this year have been more than ever sold out, so as mentioned before,
on the one hand we're really happy that people want to come, but on the other
hand really sorry if you missed out on stuff you wanted to attend.
We have broken new ground in a number of
areas, new formats, our joint hosting of The Mobile Academy with UCL, and our
rounds of feedback of what you, the community, like, want more of and so on. In
fact, we've just opened our latest survey which is at https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/momolo. Please check it out and let us know what you think. We'd love to hear from you
- plus it really helps us to know what you think ...
7th Anniversary unPanel
We closed our events this year with our 7th
Anniversary unPanel. We were really delighted that everyone said they enjoyed
it so much and found it a lot of fun, as well as being informative! Many
thanks, once again, to the unPanellists for taking part - and to the audience
(is there a difference, in this case?) for such lively and interesting
questions. Viji Pathy wrote a great piece about the content which you'll find
on the blog. http://www.mobilemonday.org.uk/2012/11/7th-birthday-unpanel-annual-round-up.html
I'm looking forward to the next event we run
in that format ...
Upcoming Events … Starting with Demo Night
… Talking of that, we're planning our
programme for the next year. Always a bit difficult, since we like to be
topical and since it's hard to see very many months in advance what will be
topical. However, there are some signature events that everyone seems to love
and we'll be doing one of those, namely Demo Night, on the 21 January and which
once again we’re running in partnership with the folks from ICTKTN. We're not
ready to open registration to attend that quite yet, but we are looking for
people to step forward to say they're interested in doing a demo. We usually
get quite a lot of interest for this, so please let us know asap if you would
like to be considered to demo - enter your details here: http://j.mp/momolo-demonight-2013-jan
- we’ll be closing applications to demo no later than 14th Jan ...
If you're not familiar with the demo night
format, well, it looks like this. Each of roughly 10 participants gets to speak
about their idea, product or service for exactly three minutes and field
questions from the audience for a couple more minutes. There are no special
qualifications, you may have an interesting idea, you may have a ready to roll
product, you may be a large company or small company … check out last April's
demo night write up for an idea of what it is all about. http://www.mobilemonday.org.uk/2012/04/event-round-up-2nd-april-demo-night.html.
Past demoers have gone on to all kinds of interesting journeys, so we'll ask a
couple of them to talk about their experiences too.
Importantly, if you'd like to do a demo, then
please fill in the form at http://j.mp/momolo-demonight-2013-jan asap. Lots of
past demoers have found the experience of having to put their message across in
3 mins very helpful, but even more helpful has the the feedback, encouragement
and suggestions from members of the community that they get. Apply now!
As to what's happening later in the year,
well, that's a secret for now. If you're interested in supporting an event with
some sponsorship, you have a topic that you'd like us to cover, then we'd love
to hear from you. By the way, did I mention that we're running survey https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/momolo
that we’d love you to fill in to tell us about that kind of thing?
The Mobile Academy
I thought I'd take this opportunity to mention
The Mobile Academy, which is the programme we ran jointly with UCL - "A 36
hour masterclass on making it mobile". Many thanks to the expert members
of the community who taught this. The feedback we got on it from attendees was extremely
heartwarming.
So here is the news, we're going to be running
a further course starting in March next year. We've got a waiting list that you
can put your name on, and it's not yet full up. So check out more about The
Mobile Academy and put your name on the list: http://themobileacademy.org.uk/
Texting is 20
And to close on a further anniversary note, it
was widely reported on Monday this week that we celebrate 20 years of SMS. I suppose that while you can argue
exactly what is meant by "the sending of the first SMS" whichever way
you look at it it's been quite a success. According to Wikipedia (where else?)
"SMS is the most widely used data application in the world, with 3.6
billion active users, or 78% of all mobile phone subscribers." That quote
referencing Tomi Ahonen's blog. Tomi's love of all things SMS is of course well
known, and if you're even slightly interested you should check it out at
http://j.mp/SPer5Q.
By contrast, perhaps, news from November seems
to indicate that operator revenues from SMS have declined for the first time
ever, the rise of IP based messaging systems being cited as the cause. That's
really quite interesting, and one to watch. Meanwhile, unwise though it may be
to predict the future in our mobile industry, I do expect SMS to be around in
another 10 years time, though it will remain an interesting journey to see how
the landscape unfolds in other respects.
Looking forward to catching up in the new
year!
