Mobile Monday London, 9th March, Write Up

A quick wrap from last night Mobile Monday London Event, which posed the question “What have Mobile Operators done for us?”

As I was speaking and on the panel I didn’t have a chance to write many notes, but thankfully a few audience members did, and @ribot recorded the presentations for prosperity.


James Parton presents O2 Litmus at Momo London from ribot on Vimeo.


Terence Eden of Vodaone on Operators and Operands, a Love Story - MoMoLondon from ribot on Vimeo.

Check these out for reviews of the evening:

Pudding Relations
Expanding Horizons

You can view my extended 12” remix O2 Litmus presentation here

I felt the evening went well.

There is always a degree of frustration in the room when the Operators get up on stage, and I totally understand why. In the past we haven’t done enough to help the developer community, and it is understandable there is a healthy dose of cynicism when Operators claim they are listening and trying to change for the better.

You can read some of that sentiment here.

I certainly welcome the opportunity to have a more open dialogue between Operators and the Mobile Monday community, and I think we should have a follow up session including some of the other Mobile Operators, especially Orange who invest heavily in Orange Partner.

I think in the main the O2 Litmus message was well received, but you tell me ;-)

When I set out with the concept we deliberately spent a lot of time researching what was wrong with existing Operator developer communities, trying to get under the hood of the frustrations of trying to work with us.

The fact that I was getting similar questions, and may be a sense that the O2 Litmus story was too good to be true, reinforced to me that the insight we gained must have been on the money, because I genuinely believe O2 Litmus can be the breath of fresh air the community has been crying out for.

However O2 Litmus is not the silver bullet to all the problems the world has to offer. We need Developers to join to tell us how O2 Litmus should develop. We can’t hope to get it right without the community taking an ownership role. As I mentioned last night, our thoughts on the O2 Litmus roadmap and API evolution are all public domain in the forums, so please feel free to join and engage in the debate.

My key take out from last night was there is still much to do to reduce the fragmentation in the mobile industry. We as Operators need to do much more to collaborate more closely and reduce the complexity and pain of creating successful mobile applications, and successful businesses.

The green shoots of this new thinking are appearing in initiatives like the GSMA OneAPI project and I will be taking a proactive stance with my colleagues at the other Mobile Operators to put some energy in bringing us closer together. The days of wall gardens are gone, and I don’t intend to be competing with other Mobile Operators for Developers, O2 Litmus is not about that.

It was great to hear Betavine is now promoted from Vodafone Live, I think that is a big step forward, and you should check out their Widget competition where £20,000 is up for grabs.

So a positive evening I felt, and hopefully a platform to build an ongoing dialogue with the Mobile Monday Community.

What did you think of the event?

If you have any questions that didn’t get answered last night, feel free to contact me via Twitter, LinkedIn or james@o2litmus.info