My new Blog is now live

Hi,

Just to let you know I've relaunched my blog with a new design, new content, and new awful pun so to keep up with my musings please redirect to www.ibegyourparton.com

Thanks

James

New survey on mobile operator developer communities

New survey on mobile operator developer communities . Let us know what you think http://bit.ly/Lw2gR

Changes to the O2 Litmus App Showdown

Last week, we launched the O2 Litmus App Showdown, with a prize of £10,000. Whilst we had a very positive response from the community, there was also some constructive feedback on how to make the competition better.

When we were planning the competition, we were keen to ensure we could involve as many O2 customers in the judging process as possible. This caused a problem for developers though, as they would have to give up 95 of their slots required to test apps – slots that as any iPhone app developer knows are extremely valuable.

We listened to the community for guidance on the optimum number of slots reserved for the developer and have subsequently had a chat about structuring things to make sure it works for the developer community.

These are the slight changes we're proposing:

· The panel of judges will be made up of 20 app-loving iPhone users
· Developers will now only need to keep 20 of their 100 slots free for the Showdown

We put this to the O2 Litmus community and received positive feedback on the forums. Hopefully this amendment to the rules means that there is now no reason for you not to enter the App Showdown.

That £10,000 is one step closer!

O2 App Showdown

It's been a while since I have had a chance to post here, although I'm doing better with the old Twitter updates!

It may have looked quiet from the outside for a few weeks, but believe me its been 100mph behind the scenes.

This morning the O2 App Showdown went live - a two month competition to find a great iPhone App for O2, with a £10,000 prize and great publicity for the winning developer. You can find out more here: www.o2litmus.co.uk/appshowdown

Along with the competition, I'm pleased to announce that O2 Litmus now supports the promotion of iPhone App's hosted within the iTunes App Store. This means developers can now promote their apps via O2 Litmus, helping address a common complaint amongst developers - "With the thousands of apps inside the App Store, just how do I get visibility?"

Today's announcement is just the first of few we have lined up, so stay tuned ;-)

New O2 Litmus Software Release Live, 11th June 09

The team has been busy beavering away behind the scenes to bring you the latest O2 Litmus release which went live today.

Firstly O2 Litmus is now connected into O2 UK’s shiny new infrastructure. This should be invisible to you, but it means that we are now super cool and future proofed! We can also start exposing more functionality from inside O2, enabling Developers to make better and more intelligent apps, meaning O2 Litmus members get more functional and personalised services.

If you have heard me speaking at a recent conference or have attended one of our developer days you will know this area is of particular interest.

This new release contains updates of our previous API’s, plus no less than four new API’s providing a rich set of functionality, allowing you to query everything from the users location, through to what type of device a customer is using, down to they have an all you can eat mobile data bolt on provisioned on their account.

Note we have updated the Developer & Member terms and conditions to take into account this new functionality - please review and ensure you understand them, here.

Finally have also updated the O2 Litmus FAQ’s, where you can find out more information on the new API set

I hope you enjoy these new features, and as every please tell us what you think, or would like to see next via the forums.

Have fun!

Plug for Being Digital 2009 including free ticket!

With only 4 days to go until Being-Digital '09 at The CBI Centre, Centre Point.
London. Who will be there?

• Mike Bracken from the Guardian will be announcing the Guardian's
  platform strategy building on their recently launched OpenPlatform product strategy
• Mike Nicholls who built and launched (yesterday) Bing.com (Microsofts
  new search product) will be on the Platforms panel talking about the future of search and platforms at Microsoft.
• Doug Richard (ex-dragon from Dragons Den) will be speaking with Julie
  Meyer (Ariadne Capital) & Charles Cohen (Probability) about how to grow a profitable digital business.
• Ed Parsons (Google) and Gary Gales (Yahoo) and others will be
  discussing location technologies and their future.
• Rory Sutherland (Vice President, Ogilvy One), Nicholas Wheeler
  (Managing Director, ITN On) and others will be speaking about the future of social media.

What is unique about Being-Digital is that there is no PowerPoint.

• The debate will be lead by chosen authorities in their fields who are all accomplished speakers
• They will be sharing personal insights into hottest digital topics
• You will be able to set the questions and guide the discussion via SMS and Twitter
• You'll discover innovative new start-ups
• You'll be able to present your business to active angel investors
• You'll be able to absorb critical opinion shaping your digital strategy

The guys provide a specific demo area where companies can raise their visibility with potential customers, partners and investors. They are expecting around 40 Demo Companies and 200+ digital executives, entrepreneurs & investors making for some excellent networking opportunities along with 2 Angels Den pitch events where startups will be pitching to active angel investors.

If you want to demo email Emma on team@mashupevent.com

UKTI is offering a free booth at Technology World '09 in COVENTRY http://www.technologyworld09.com/ To be in with a chance to win this you have to be a demo company at the event.

Find out more here
http://www.being-digital.com/demo/ There is an opportunity to win £5,000 of
virtual office service from eOffice. http://www.eoffice.net/


To register and pay the standard rate of £245+VAT or Entrepreneur rate of £125+VAT please go to www.being-digital.com/register/ However, there are some discounted tickets available from our Partners including SUN, Natwest, eOffice, UKTI and Angels Den. If you want to know more about these please email team@mashupevent.com

If you want to win the only FREE TICKET in the house you have to submit a 30 second video on "what does Being-Digital mean?" http://seesmic.com/mashupevent/

Being-Digital '09 has also partnered with B'tween http://www.btween.com/ who are running a complementary digital event in Liverpool on 11th and 12th June (the same week). There is an inclusive ticket for Being-Digital '09 and the coach up here along with the speakers.
http://www.mashupevent.com/event/btween-09-being-digital-09


Being-Digital '09 is brought to you in by mashup* event - sponsored by: Intel, SUN, NetBenefit, Doughty Hanson, Speechly, BCS, UKTI, WIN and in partnership with NatWest, Microsoft, G2i, DrinkTank, Smarta, Chinwag, Techfluff.tv, Winston&Strawn Bootlaw and The Next Women.

See you there on Tuesday!

Win the chance to go to the Mobile Web 2.0 Summit!

Win the chance to go to the Mobile Web 2.0 Summit!

We’re giving five developers the chance to go to the Mobile Web 2.0 Summit, which takes place on Wednesday 3rd June 2009 to Thursday 4th June 2009 at the Jumeirah Carlton Tower in Knightsbridge, London

I’ll be speaking on the Wednesday on ‘Mobile Operator 2.0’ and the changing the business model and strategy of operators. That’s followed by a roundtable and panel discussion on the development of operator strategies in relation to increasing mobile user engagement and new approaches to working. The two days brings together some fantastic speakers and panellists, so it should be a great event.

To be in with a chance of winning one of the five passes to Mobile Web 2.0 Summit, just complete the following steps:

1. Register on O2 Litmus at www.o2litmus.co.uk
2. Send an email to james@o2litmus.info with the subject line ‘Contest‘ and the following:

• Your O2 Litmus username
• A 140 character twitter-style sentence explaining why you should be one of the developers to go to the Mobile 2.0 Summit with O2 Litmus.

The competition ends at midnight on Thursday 28th May 2009. Winners will be announced on Friday 29th May 2009 on the O2 Litmus site, with the five winning developers being contacted by email after the competition closes with further details on how to get their passes.

Best of luck and don’t forget – our latest marketing campaign is due to go out to hundreds of thousands of O2 customers, so get uploading your applications to O2 Litmus now!

James
www.twitter.com/jamesparton

Countdown to O2 Litmus Marketing Campaign

I'd like to give you a heads up that O2 Litmus is about to launch its largest marketing campaign to date.

In a few days time we'll contact hundreds of thousands of O2 customers by email, inviting them to join O2 Litmus. We're offering incentives for sign up with 20 Sony Ericsson handsets and ten PlayStation 3s on offer as prizes. I wanted to give you a heads up so you can get the apps you'd like to test, premium test or sell uploaded in advance.

These customers have been carefully targeted based on the phone they own, their usage of mobile data services, and the marketing segment they represent, so we're confident they will be fans of what you are doing.

This campaign will help O2 Litmus to grow and provide momentum. I'm keen to get your feedback on how it goes, and any other marketing ideas you may have to boost O2 Litmus. I've opened up a new thread in the forums for you to comment and chat. (May customer campaign)

O2 Litmus Roadmap Developer Session

O2 Litmus Roadmap Developer Session
Originally uploaded by jamesparton

O2 Litmus held its first "Live Road Mapping" event on Wednesday this week where we had a good dialogue with some of our member Developers. A big thank you for Elayne and Graham for running to the shops to buy a VGA cable for the projector to avoid a disaster!

You can find the topics covered by visiting the Developer Day thread in the Roadmap section of the O2 Litmus forum. Please be sure to give us your views on the debate.

Next up, O2 has also just announced its X Prize competition. If you are a UK entrepreneur be sure to check it out here: http://www.o2.co.uk/xawards

Finally the next of our marketing campaigns to the O2 customer base begins shortly, so make sure you are uploading your applications to O2 Litmus in anticipation of a larger and fresh audience.

O2 Litmus Update

Hello All,

Lots to update you regarding O2 Litmus.

We have delivered a couple of new software releases in the past week, bringing some great new functionality to O2 Litmus. First was the introduction of "Premium Testing" powered by our partner Mob4Hire. You can read the press release from Mobile World Congress here.

Next up, in response to Developer demand, we have introduced support for web based services. So now a developer is not forced to offer a downloadable application when they publish a new project. Now the offer can simply be a URL based service consumed via the mobile phone or PC web browser. We hope this move opens up a rich vein of creativity and starts to move O2 Litmus into catering for PC as well as mobile users.

We have our "Live Road Mapping" session coming up next week which we are all excited about. The original allocation of tickets was quickly snapped up so we added a few more. Be sure to register asap. It will be a great opportunity to meet the team behind O2 Litmus, network with likeminded people, and most importantly tell us how you want O2 Litmus to develop over the coming months. You can get all the details here.

Before we know it the Summer conference season will be upon us and after the stir we have created since launch, O2 Litmus is in demand!!

Here is my current 2009 "fixture list", I hope to see you at one of these events:

Mobile Operator Smart Pipes & Applications, London, 19-20th May, 2009
Mobile Web 2.0 Summit, London, 3rd - 4th June, 2009
Being Digital 2009, London, 9th - 10th June, 2009
Mobile 2.0 Europe, Barcelona, 18th - 19th June, 2009
Mobile Entertainment Market (MeM), London, 23rd - 24th June, 2009

Until next time,

James

www.twitter.com/jamesparton

Drum Tracks

Been messing about recording off my Roland TD-12. mixing in an iPod feed so the drums overlay on top of the original songs. Here's a couple of tracks. Not perfect but you get the idea...

A View To A Kill, Duran Duran

Bad Dream, Keane

"Official" O2 Innovation Day Video

A little late, but here is the video created by the O2 team capturing the essence of the day:



Also thanks for all the interest in the O2 Litmus Roadmapping event. We sold out the initial 40 tickets, but have just added another 20, so get 'em while they are hot ;-)

O2 Litmus Live Road Mapping

Come join us for a few drinks, some food, some networking, and to hear about some ideas we have for O2 Litmus. More importantly you tell us what you want to see in it, hence the title - live road mapping!

For more info and sign up visit: http://o2litmus.eventbrite.com/

Look forward to seeing you there.

O2 Innovation Day

I was hoping to write this up sooner, but just a few thoughts on the recent O2 Innovation Day that was held at the rather nice Matter Club inside The O2 complex in London on the 16th March 2009.

This was the second year in a row that my team had organised the Innovation Day.

The idea behind the day is to get O2 people out of their day to day working environment. Bring in leading companies that are shaping the agenda of ours and adjacent industries, share knowledge, make connections and stimulate the creative juices.

We learnt a lot from last year's event, and judging from the feedback I have seen I think we successfully applied a lot of the learning's. We brutally chopped the Powerpoint, we focused on panel debate and interactivity, and most importantly we opened up.

This year saw a number of companies invited in to demo and network with O2's senior leadership team. O2 Litmus played its role, with two competition winners (Ribot and Fring) taking their place alongside more established O2 partners like Microsoft & Nokia. I hope this provided some interesting conversation and business development opportunities.

You can read the thoughts of Antony from Ribot here.

You can also watch a couple of Antony's video's:


O2 Innovation Day - morning hello part 1 from ribot on Vimeo.


O2 business strategy innovation from ribot on Vimeo.


James Parton introduces O2 Litmus from ribot on Vimeo.


James Parton on O2 Litmus part II from ribot on Vimeo.


James Parton on O2 Litmus part III from ribot on Vimeo.


O2 Innovation Day - Sesson 1, Mobile application and services from ribot on Vimeo.


O2 Innovation day - session 1, Mobile application and services part 2 from ribot on Vimeo.

Hopefully events like this reinforce that O2 Litmus is helping to drive cultural change inside an Operator like O2, and shows we are willing to air our dirty laundry, wrestling with key challenges in an open and collaborative way.

It also tangibly demonstrates we don't know all the answers, but by using vehicles like O2 Litmus we are genuinely looking to the market and our customers to help shape the future.

O2 Litmus Video Tour

Here is a world exclusive :-)

Before it even makes it onto http://www.o2litmus.co.uk/ itself, below you can finally watch the long awaited O2 Litmus Video Tour, let me know what you think...


O2 Litmus Video Tour from O2 Litmus on Vimeo.

#himum

“My mum told me she is now following me on twitter so she knows what I'm doing as i don't ever tell her, lol. Hi Mum if you are reading this” 8:51 AM Mar 11th from web

So I posted what I thought was a rather unremarkable tweet back on the 11th March.

I’m so busy at work, and spend my life talking to people about what I do, I always fail to devote as much time and effort in communicating with my parents as I should. It has become a bit of a running joke in the family. “How can you stand up and present to hundreds of people, yet when you speak to me you can’t manage more than a mumbled sentence”, you must know the kind of thing I’m talking about?

I do often feel like Chandler from Friends, where no one quite understands what he does for a living.

Anyway a few weeks ago I was literally stunned when my Mother tells me, “Oh I’m following you on twitter as it’s the only way I can see what you are up to” This from parents who are not exactly technology leaders, and only had Broadband installed in the last few months.

Quite how she had discovered Twitter, and then found me I’m not quite sure. I will have to quiz her this weekend. (Mothers Day and all that). May be we can tweet each other from across the table when we go out for a meal!

I was equally surprised yesterday at the O2 Innovation Day when @tonyfish said he has starting seeing people including “hi mum” in tweets after my original message. I’m not sure if I truly am the trend setter Tony positioned me as, but thanks Tony anyway! If this is all old hat with you Twitter Vets, then apologies, I am fairly new myself to the Twitsphere. (Is that a term??!)

Still, spurned into action by my cyber stalking Mum, I will be including #himum in all my whereabouts status updates from now on.

So I wonder how many of you find yourself in a similar position via your use of social media, and I guess examples like this reinforce Twitters move into the mainstream.

30 Top Albums

Lifted from my Facebook profile...

Don't try to be cool, tell the truth...Think of 30 albums (shrink it to 15 if you like) that had such a profound effect on you they changed your life or the way you looked at it. They sucked you in and took you over for days, weeks, months, years. These are the albums that you can use to identify time, places, people, emotions. These are the albums that no matter what they were thought of musically shaped your world. When you finish, tag 30 others, including me. Make sure you copy and paste this part so they know the drill. Get the idea? Good.

Dreamtime - The Cult
Construction Time Again - Depeche Mode
Songs From The Big Chair - Tears For Fears
The 12" Album - Howard Jones
Under A Blood Red Sky - U2
October - U2
The Doors - The Doors
First And Last And Always - Sisters Of Mercy
Talk About The Weather - Red Lorry Yellow Lorry
Never Another Sunset - The Rose Of Avalanche
Gods Own Medicine - The Mission
First Chapter - The Mission
Pornography - The Cure
The Real Thing - Faith No More
Attack Of The Grey Lantern - Mansun
Friends - The Bolshoi
Badmotorfinger - Soundgarden
Disraeli Gears - Cream
Dirt - Alice In Chains
Exit Planet Dust - Chemical Brothers
Twice As Nice - Fantazia
Diamonds Are Forever - Salvation
II - Orbital
Let Love Rule - Lenny Kravitz
Rage Against The Machine - Rage Against The Machine
Screamadelica - Primal Scream
Ten - Pearl Jam
Tinderbox - Siouxsie
Through The Veil - Claytown Troupe
Vivid - Living Colour

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

Photo's from MWC 2009

Presenting in the Business Models of Mobile 2.0





Chilling with our buddies from Mob4Hire...

O2 Litmus Deck for Mobile World Congress 2009

Here is the deck I used during MWC 2009.

O2 Litmus Mobile World Congress 2009

View more presentations from James Parton. (tags: o2 litmus)