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)

MWC Day 4

Well we made it to the end!

I spent the whole day at the WIP Jam, speaking on an "un" panel, and managed to get the last word in (!). I then co-chaired the testing round table with Paul from Mob4Hire and generally hung out and had a number of interesting conversations.

You can check out the Twitter chatter from the event here #wipjam

Here is a photo of the wrap up at the end of the day:



The general theme of the panel was fragmentation, technology choices, distribution and of course how to make money.

In terms of summarising my contribution, I'll start with my closing comments / rant.

One of the panelists said Operators need to reduce their revenue shares on premium sms to give the developers a break.

The developer community has a clear message /requirement - show me how to make money. To achieve this all parties in the value chain / ecosystem (insert buzzword here) need to be incentivized to invest.

This is the only way we can turn this into a sustainable business.

The panel included handset manufacturers, VC's, Operators, and software sitting in front of a room full of developers. Everyone in the room needs money. How then does a race to the bottom, cutting value out of a nascent industry, help any of us?

Marketing is not about giving stuff away for free. If you make a product people value they will pay you money for it. It's worked for thousands of years, so do we assume mobile app's won't work like that? What's special about this space? Am I missing something?

It's all about setting expectation.

If you position something as worthless today, it's so much harder to go back and then justify imposing charges later on. I've heard stories this week of developers giving away app's they believe have a value purley to drive visibility in the growing mess that is the Apple app store. "I have to because I need to stay in the top 5 so people can find me"

That's a crazy model right, and how does that answer the question show me how to make money?

I made the point a couple of times today that the mass market does not know what apps are. It's a small community of developers and early adopters (mostly iPhone owners we are led to believe, may be GetJar would disagree, they seem to be doing ok!!) that are creating all the buzz at the moment.

If we discount all the value out of the market today then you have set expectation for mass market adoption when it comes, if it comes. Again, how does that help you make money?

In a side conversation I likened it to Henry Ford giving away Ford Model T's free of charge before anyone had a driving license. Sure there was a risk that no one would trade in their horse for a car, and some one had to build roads, but stick in there, be clear on the value proposition and if people understand and recognise the value they will change their behaviour and pay you at the same time.

Kind of irrelevant if operators share 100%, 70%, 50%, 30% of revenue, if the price point is zero.

This leads me to the second theme I tried to explain. How many developers research their ideas and trial their products with real end users / customers, or is the model throw something against the wall and see if it sticks?

There seemed to be no real preference in the room, with many trying both. Surely in the current climate developers can not afford to speculate on what customers may want when they could learning what customers do want. Back to Henry, if you get this right, then you can charge a premium because there is an inherent value in what you are doing.

As the guy said at the last Mobile Mobile in London, "all of this is great, but tell me how I make money from Widgets and don't say advertising"