Rich communications in the cloud ?

Informa ‘s rich communications conference was held in November 2009. I joined a panel there, and participated to follow-on meetings of GSMA RCS initiative and developer challenge. My findings :

• Standard-based integration is becoming a nice-to have feature as the cloud provides better ways to reach critical mass and ROI.
• Several solutions deliver innovation beyond industry standards, to offer the best of both worlds.
• New devices such as net-book, internet appliances and social network behavior will drive the evolution of next generation communications.

Standards are only nice-to-have features
No one disputes that interoperability made SMS successful and enabled MMS modest penetration (Graham Trickey of GSMA gave an example : "MMS had 50% growth in USA since interoperability agreements in 2008". The challenge is that since the iPhone launch, and Web.20 web solutions, there is not much demand for applications with limited feature set, coming late. Even in emerging markets, users are impatient and tech-savy. So what is the status of telecom industry standard initiatives :

• GSMA has been promoting applications through RCS pilots, and enabling technologies such as OneAPI for networks and OMTP BONDI in handsets.
  Why did RCS take 2 years before doing pilots ? The investigation was done in 2007, release 1 published at the end of 2008, release 2 adding the support of net books was published for the market trials in 2009. Trials were done in 6 countries : Italy (TIM ; only 50 internal users although TIM has 30’000 of its mobile community bundle Tribu) , Spain (Telefonica), Portugal (Optimus) , Korea (SKT with Pajama5 ) , France (Bouygues Telecom, Orange, SFR ; with 2 handset manufacturers). RCS release 2 offers content sharing (videos, images during a voice call), messaging (chat) and network address book. But only the release 3 will include social network integration. GSMA is currently chaired by Aude Pichelin and in order to get wider adoption of its approach it has launched the RCS developer challenge , supported by GSMA officers including John Darnbrough.
  The technology competition from the Web is huge and many are skeptical about the chances of success of telecom industry standards . Paolo Simoes, from TMN Portugal says bluntly : "RCS delivers the lowest common denominator and lacks any Wow! effect, like previous attempts : Mobile IM, push to talk, ...". Providing another comparion, Roberto Minerva suggested : " developers would prefer the Skype API". My view is that despite rumors of Open source , this is focused on 3rd party scripts and applications to control Skype UI. Alan Quayle provides a summary of challenges in recruiting web developers in his blogs and reports on network APIs. To be fair to RCS, we note that web communication applications are still equally fragmented or often undocumented. And note that web apps still refer to the dial-tone paradigm to describe presence management Twitter, Google Lattitude.
• Operators have recognized that cloud-based or “over the top” solutions will dominate operator-led solutions.
  Traditional revenue models of operators don’t seem to be valid for new communication services ? Traditional models were based on managed services with subscription and usage fees. Cloud computing, voice services such as GTalk and Skype or social applications like Twitter, Facebook and web social networks have changed the economics. Commenting on this for TMN Portugal, Paolo Simoes commented “SMS and MMS rates are decreasing by 2 digit percentage annually and therefore no business model based on communication usage increase is sustainable; flat rates are going down from 90$ to 20$ and no additional market stimulation is necessary; lastly no monetization of presence is possible when Facebook and MSN status are free”. His advice : “if you cannot beat them [Facebook, Yahoo!, Google,…] join them”. And he sums up his prediction : “ it took 14 years to deploy 3G, 7 years for 3G, it will take less than 4 years for LTE and the move for an all IP application infrastructure – in 2015 China Mobile will acquire Vodafone and the dominant application will be some kind of FaceTube from China ;-)”.
  
  Vodafone appears to have done a similar analysis, promoting Facebook and other cloud social network but adding value added in the form of service aggregation in the Vodafone 360 application. But again, to be fair, the monetization of Twitter and Facebook is equally challenging, and we have witnessed the 75% valuation drop of Skype, despite their phenomenal growth.

Cool applications : innovation and standards
What makes me optimistic is that the applications coming out are nice. There after all may be a smoother transition from telecom 1.0 industry standards to meet mobile Web 2.0 . Here are some examples :

• Cross-device social communicator :
  Movial Communicator was deployed by Optimus as part of a youth community services branded TAG, a mobile subscription at a flat rate of 10 Euros . Nuno Lopes Gama from Optimus reported that TAG has 100’000 users in the 15-25 years age group and reports good usage of the PC Webphone for voice and SMS . However there has been little demand for VoIP or messaging from the Enterprise sector, as they already have low prices for voice calls and more advanced professional messaging (from Microsoft). Movial has deployed applications with 15 operators on multiple handsets (Symbian, Maemo, Android) and provides integration with music services, social networks (Facebook), UGC sharing ( Flickr, Daily motion) and participated to RCS French trial (with Bouygues). It also offers a hosted services with Haloya .
  
• Smart phone idle screen communications:
  SKT Telecom Pajama 5 was launched after SK Telecom measured that 62 % of calls were to less than five numbers ( 29 % of these to one person and 51% to top 3 called parties). The service let’s you designate 4 buddies and adds : expression with wallpapers, animated messages , A-GPS friend finder , feed from SNS sites (Cyworld, Facebook). The service attracted 350,000 youth subscribers in 3 months and is being extended to more participants in 2010 . For the general market, SKT has launched mobile IM interoperability with other operators, growing usage 20X in 2009 ( 60% of subscribers have mobile IM-enabled handsets but 200’000 use it). This project was part of HP’s open innovation programs and included partners like Eluon .
  
• Ambient communications “ :
  HP Labs team submitted Friendlee to the RCS innovation challenge as a concept to demonstrate the automatic generation of a social network. Phone contacts are dynamically weighted by user’s mobile communication frequency, duration and location records. It leverages the mobile network intelligence to shows your friends and preferred businesses on a map, highlighting your closest friends or implicit recommendations. The more the user calls or sends SMS to a friend, the higher up he or she will be on the user’s list. And obviously, this can be linked to Facebook and other SNS.

Usage of devices and social applications
What trends will influence the evolution of these services ?

• Net books adoption : it is clear that net-books, tablets, photo frames are starting to bring new ideas into the mobile communications space. An estimated 5 million net books were shipped in 2009, a 30% growth rate from 2008. Major manufacturers include Acer, Asus, HP and Samsung ( (the last two entrants growing over 30%). Subsidized prices start around 200$ for models like HP mini 311. This is not yet a big adoption compared to smart phones but net-books are a market catalyst in terms of mobile rich communications functionality.
• Mobile social networks : Christine Perey authored two editions of Informa’s mobile social network comprehensive worldwide analysis. They forecast that the users of mobile social networking will grow from 8% at the end of 2008 to 25% by 2013, generating over 6 billion $ by that date (from subscriptions, advertising and transactions) . Another trend is that all web communities are mobilizing and that the functionality is “creeping” in every other application category. Perey research is now researching mobile augmented reality, a particular category that also provides a direction for very elaborate form of group interactions using advanced device capabilities together with cloud computing resources.
• Youth market trends : in recent months I have been working with C:Insight on segmentation and ethnographic analysis of emerging mobile markets like India, Africa and South-East markets which could prove market-changers in the domain of rich communications. Some data on mobile youth users :

300 million in China, Taiwan and Hong Kong

219 million in South-East Asia

124 million in Western Europe

146 million users in Latin America

60 million in Central and Southern Africa

Youth users in the US, UK and NL use thier mobile 1.5 hours / day ,


Asian Youth use it 3.5 hours / day.

34% of youth bought their mobile phones only to send SMS.

Teens are sending/receiving 100 SMS messages 3,000 / month.

16 % of youth subscribers have smartphones.

57% of youth in India browsed on their mobile phones

• It is interesting to note that even in rural India, users are tech-savy and interested in loading applications. Market-education and communication will be essential to achieve viral marketing . For example campaigns for Vodafone value-added services “ZooZoo” could be as important as the service itself.
• Network driven innovation : Diane Meyers authored Infonetics research on RCS market in 2009. She estimates there will be over 1 million subscribers in 2010, 5 M in 2011 and M by 2013, deployed over 3G networks with an IMS core. It is clear that there has been some delays and these estimates are quite tentative. In addition one could question whether IMS or cloud services will become core to RCS, perhaps a mix of the two as my discussions seemed to indicate. Infonetics rightly indicated early on that the operators challenges were not only service interoperability but capability to innovate to grow the market.

Innovations at ITU Telecom World 09

ITU's Telecom World 2009, Geneva, October 9
Popular debates at ITU events tend to be policies, regulation, economy. This year the event attracted 18,000 visitors, a modest number due in part to the economy but probably also competition with other telecom trade shows in Europe. Visitors flocked to the Swiss stand, which proved to be one of the show’s most popular, covering 700 m2 on two levels and promoting the region’s excellence by highlighting thirty innovative companies and organizations based there. I went instead to meet friends at start-ups such as :

• Axelprod machine to machine mobile communication
• AxSionics ID management
  
• Adeya secure mobile communications
  
• id Quantique layer 2 communication encryption
• Klewel video content management
  
• Les alchimistes call center interconnection software
  
• Netguardians network and system event management
• Sensometrix : biometric security access
  
• Sensorscope mobile weather and environmental monitoring
  
• Osmosys secure mobile messaging and applications
• Ozwe interactive multimedia user interfaces
  
• Wisekey information and communications security

Frederic Kaplan co-founder of Ozwe invited me to play with his QB1 machine. I experienced the easy interaction with music with gesture-based interfaces and touch. I proved a poor user of the ball games. Later, with Sid Arora of Mobile Monday Switzerland I participated to a short web cast with our friend Tanguy de Lestré from Mobile Monday Brussels :

Incubating innovation at MIT, 23 September 2009

Lab to market workshop at MIT
The session was led by Wim Sweldens, Vice President Alcatel-Lucent Ventures (ALV). He is also inventor of wavelet compression that led to JPEG2000. ALV is a corporate venture-capital fund for scientists within the Bell Labs. Sven told us the story behind Alcatel's OmniAccess 3500 . It started when an inventor (Dimitrios Stiliadis) submitted the idea to ALV incubation project nicknamed Evros within 2007. The initial idea was a laptop card with a VPN, single-sign-on and WLAN/3G capabilities. But the improvement came from an IT staff who understood how to make it a remote laptop control by adding : battery and OS, remote wipe/lock as well as remote application management. As another example of a "hobby" that turned into a "big" idea he quoted Linus Torvalds posting

Aug 25, 1991 usenet : comp.os.minix
“What would you like to see most in minix?“:
Hello everybody out there using minix — I’m doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won’t be big and professional like gnu) ....

Responding to his questions, the audience suggested 10 key points for innovation :

1. Culture (of innovation)
   
2. Failures (entrepreneurship is about risk, failure is a temporary state)
3. Prototyping (permanent beta : Linus Torwald turned to users to get feedback ),
4. Customer relevance (unmet needs, as with Kindle launch with Sprint or the whole net neutrality debate : consumers want it)
   
5. Scalability (cloud, fast market adoption),
6. Collaboration (about teams Swelden quoted "who 1st, then what" from Jim Collins, co-author of Built To Last, a study of companies that exceed their industry [success factors include : persistence over many years, right people on board and the wrong people off board before strategy, CEOs from within their own ranks and not from the outside]he says that small teams of A-players is the secret of venture investment).
   
7. Marketing (targeting, creating an ecosystem value-chain, no linear go to market process is possible in a Web 2.0 world, you need innovation at every single step including in marketing value chains)
8. Ideas (protection with patents or better by fast execution),
9. Strategy (technology + business innovation, Robert Reich in the Future of Success writes "the geek needs a shrink" to understand and opportunity),
10. Governance and regulation (pay attention to government incentives, regulation particularly in health care or in P2P "over the top" content management)
    

Commenting this audience list Wim distilled it down to one single element :

People
People have the culture, include customers of innovation, define strategy, ensure collaboration. "If you focus on the people, you will innovate"

Video of Wim Sweldens at Emtech09.

"Innovation = Invention + Commercialization", MIT Entrepreneurship Center
The workshop was kept lively by Kenneth (Ken) Morse, founder of MIT Entrepreneurship Center who made frequent "cold calls" with the audience. Participants contributes the following keywords on innovation : "the guts to try something new and tenacity to stay on ", "passion, relentless listening to customers", "cheaper and better ways to meet needs", "new ways of doing things...and that somebody will pay money for ".

Ken had listed his own success factors for innovation and yes he agreed " they sum up to People"

1. Attitudes
2. Passionate behavior
3. Management talent
4. Flexibility in small organizations
5. Product quality and speed to market
6. Patents and sustainable advantage
7. Quality investors
8. Location clusters of excellence

Here are some comments that were exchanged :

Attitude, passion, management (points 1-3)

• Regulation is enemy of innovation. He challenged financial controllers with Howard Stevenson's definition of innovation : pursuing an opportunity beyond the resources available today "we'll worry about the money later..."
• Be willing to be Unusual/Unconventional, "break the harmony"
• As key factor for attitude : parent(s) who are entrepreneurs - "Violate labours laws and get your 8-year old kids involved in your company" and practical, real world experience before, during and after university studies.
• You need an “A” Team –“3K” experience (know the market, know people, be known in the market) . But "be ready with equity to give, if they don't want equity, you don't want them".
• "Recruit, Support, and Celebrate “Weird” people who are results-oriented, relish change, and have very fast clock speeds".
  

Organizations (point 4)

• Closely held (family owned) businesses are outperforming public companies (that was also the case of IBM and HP as long as founder's families were involved).
  
• Corporate business units are outstanding at incremental improvement (HP laser printer and ink-jet businesses had 20% / year improvement for 20 years).
• "Open innovation" is important as described by Henry Chesbrough of UC Berkeley . But Ken"OI is not the only game in town".

About product, speed, patents (points 5-6 )

• Our world has the ability to adopt and deploy faster and faster. He showed the technology adoption curves.

• You have to decide if your product is going to compete on price (Wallmart )or on innovation (Apple, HP for many years, Goolge) or customer intimacy (IBM, Mc Kinsey,... hotels HP these days)
• If you are in a big company do not despair "big pockets but short arms". But you have to challenge your company policy : "Can it embrace high risk ventures?" 6 out of 10 startups projects are shut down ; 1-2 are tremendous successes". Be prepared to change adverse reactions, this is the reason people join big companies.
  
• Ken gave the example of HP who as a corporation invested 1B$ in laser printers and one month later another 1B$ into the competing inkjet. That started as a bet on radical innovation but from then on it was an incremental game. "Continue relentlessly recruit A-players and invest, you will continue to dominate".

Investment and location (points 7-8)

• How to get funding ? "The best source of funding is the customer. Don't ask VCs, rather go and meet them to tell them that you are cash positive and growing".
  
• This is also valid if you operate inside a corporation : " the best stage gate is a purchase order. - don't ask the committee, contaminate the process with the voice of the customer".
• Clusters of innovation and locations have been analyzed by the Monitor Group.
  

Overall, the workshop was a teaser for MIT's course on corporate venturing and for the entrepreneurship course Ken teaches in Europe at Delft University of Technology, in Europe. The Center acting Director, Bill Aulet Managing Director, participated in another panel session.

Connected people user experiences, MIT

Bill Moggridge, Founder IDEO, MIT September 23, 2009
Bill Moggridge's presentation entitled Contexts for design in a connected world was a catalog of examples. He opened it with a statement on design " it is about people, environment and the world in which we live".

He illustrated differences in people with the example of an early mobile payment system at a vending machine in Japan. It showed a user respectful of machines and happy to fiddle and push keypads. Japanese are trained to this during their long commute to work, but they would not talk much. Oppositely, he said Americans would enjoy phone conversations or voice-activated applications while driving their car.

The social environment is changing too : "in the the previous century, we designed things, in the current century we design for health". "Architects were designing buildings and now they design social interaction spaces". And we now look at social impact around the world. For example IDEO designed tools to help design for those "at the bottom of the pyramid" (the less developed world). These tools are available on-line, the work was sponsored by the Gates foundation.

He commented on designing for sustainability: "that used to be about materials but now about it is about designing lifestyles". We looked at a video of Tangible Earth, an interactive digital globe designed by Shin-ichi Takemura to visualize global warming and other changes occurring in real-time or in the future on the planet.


Space, people and prototypes

Space : "you cannot live in a Dilbert's cubicle and cooperate". Ideo's project spaces are informal stickies, photographs dedicated to project. Cafes areas, brainstorms

People : understanding people and insight on potential products. IDEO has summarized 51 methods for analyzing people interactions on a deck of cards. One of them : observation is key
- Look : have teams stay when it is happening, like a fly on the wall
- Ask : foreign correspondents around the world provide 24 hours response
- Try : get people to try prototypes "wear thick glove when using phones in cold weather"

Prototypes, how to build them ?

Shop , build mechanics, build electronic lab

Screen design with Adobe Flash and CS Director

Use even simpler mock-ups

Enact situation with improvised theatrical behavior

The theme of the presentation was very similar to stories in Bill Moggridge's book "Designing interaction" where he introduces 40 case-studies from designers, describing the evolution from inspiration to products.

Cameraphone applications, Zurich

Mobile Monday Switzerland at ETHZ, April 6, 2009
Christine Perey, of Perey Research introduced the subject by explaining that with the installed base of camera phones, voice/SMS are more the only. Some application examples include :

• Mobile phone to capture meta-data around images.
  
• Mobile augmented reality (AR) which is the world plus what you want to know about it.
  
• MIT Media Lab SixthSense wearable projection computer project

Juha Laurila from Nokia research center in Lausanne gave an introduction on their work in mobile augmented reality. As a result of camera phones penetration, Nokia is the de-facto largest camera manufacturer in the world. They see it as magic lenses to annotate the view of the world. Sensors such as GPS, compass, accelerometer information to pictures.

One example is 3D vision of Helsinki. Nokia Image Space allows users to upload Geo-tagged photos with a strong community aspect. The technology consists of a mobile client for photo capture/upload and a browser to review experience. Nokia Image Space is one demonstration of tagged photos with a strong community aspect.

Another mobile augmented reality based on image recognition. For example a tourist can get information on public building by taking a picture. It can also help land mark navigation - the same way human use to say : "turn left after the church".

Daniel Wagner from Graz University of Technology showed numerous demos of how a mobile phone can provide a virtual view on the real world. Numerous augmented reality projects have been developed in software on ARM chips and can now be implemented with accelerators on mobile phones. The industry is entering the commercial phase and there is investment for that. The future looks good he says. Some of their demos show the tracking of objects with feature recognition (these include “Invisible Train” and “Virtuoso” projects).

Herbert Bay, CEO of Kooaba
Kooaba helps connect the real world (for example a picture of the ETH building) with the web (a list of landmarks or information sources). The mobile service is available live now with a database of a few million objects (Media covers, cinema posters, landmark buildings, magazine pages are well recognized). Snapping a picture of an object is enough to learn all about it. The system recognizes objects in still pictures and links the user directly to web content or other digital services. Some of the challenges are scalability and implementation on cloud computing resources. Herbert also demonstrated recognition of moving pictures.

Roger Fischer,CEO and co-founder of Kaywa
Roger explained how the initial 2D codes success in Japan (since 2003) is progressing to Europe. In Japan QR codes are pervasive from food to entertainment, transport applications. However, there is still a large fragmentation of code standards, QR codes, Data matrix, Aztec Code, Datamatrix, EZcode, QR Code, Semacode, MaxiCode, Optaretc..
Kaywa is providing solutions and services  for campaigns with codes for major brands in Switzerland and across Europe. “DokoDare: Places, People, Me,” is a location-based mobile service based on QR Codes.
Roger gave some examples of adoption of the technologies :
Handset Manufacturers

• Nokia : Datamatrix, QR Code
• Japanese Handsets/Asus (Taiwan): QR Code
• Google Android: QR Code, EAN

Organizations

• IATA: QR Code, Datamatrix, Aztec
• GS1: EAN, Datamatrix, QR Code
• OMA: Datamatrix, QR Code

Mindaugas Stonys, Convision
He gave an insight on development and production launch of mobile products based on BeeTagg honeycomb technology. Here's my own beetag logo on the left. Connvision developed a real-time reader for QR-Codes, BeeTaggs and Datamatrix. He showed applications in the media industry : Aftonbladet is Sweden's largest newspaper, 120'000 Swedish users downloaded the BeeTagg reader in 6 months and 2.8 million know about it). Mindaugas indicated prerequisites for monetization of 2D-code applications :

1. multi-platform
2. flexible pricing
3. branding

For further pointers on mobile AR, check Florian Michahelles blog and video playlist.

MIT's entrepreneurship example, February, 2009

Massachusetts Institute of Technology February 25 - 26, 2009

A sign of hope during the current financial crisis comes from the recent study from "Entrepreneurial impact: the role of MIT" which analyzes the economic effect of MIT alumni-founded companies and its entrepreneurial ecosystem. The report was supported by Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation wand notes that if the active companies founded by MIT graduates formed an independent nation, their revenues would make that nation at least the 17th-largest economy in the world. and with a less conservative estimate of their annual world sales would equal $2 trillion, producing the equivalent of the 11th-largest economy in the world. Herve Lebret of EPFL has posted comments on this survey.

MIT and EPFL Innovation eco-systems

I wanted to see first hand the impact of soft skills on innovation, such as MIT Venture Mentoring Service, started in 2000 by Sherwin Greenblatt, vice president of the MIT Alumni Association, and former first employee of Amar Bose. I attended a workshop organised by its director Jerome Smith and operations manager Roberta McCarthy,(contact).

• "We house a portfolio of activities where academics (faculty, students) interact with the business community (entrepreneurs, investors, managers, lawyers) on a frequent basis.
• We work to assure that the business community sees the university as welcoming, easy to interact with, a source of new ideas (and deals) and an opportunity to contribute
• Experienced investors (angels, venture capital) brings more than capital : board guidance, executive talent, connections to partners... and is wonderful source of role models and mentors"

Lita Nelsen, head of MIT Technology Licensing Office

The key is the collaboration between professionals.
"a venture is more likely to thrive when an idea, a good business plan and an entrepreneur are matched with proven skills and experience; highly qualified mentors find it compelling and rewarding"

Jerome Smith, co-director MIT VMS

MIT VMS currently counts 140 mentors (56% with an MIT background) mentoring 98 active ventures (582 served to date). I recorded part of a panel discussion where MIT VMS mentors and start-up mentees share their cooperation experience.

Some VMS Mentors :

• Kathleen (Kathy) Huber, founder/CxO Pico Innovations, Ohia Networks Silver Beech Networks, IronBridge Networks; consultant at First founders
• Stan Bryant, former Admiral, US Naval Academy
• Connie Stack, currently co-founder ConRoy Corp.
• Jerry Socol, former CEO of 5 companies:Filene’s, J. Baker, Buy-Rite Designs, Brandstamp, Fun Designs; currently consulting at Socol group
• Josh Kowitt, founder of founded ResFridge at 18, Collegeboxes, named Top 30 Entrepreneur by Inc., blogs here
• Stephen Smith, founder Optas, manager at Dendrite International, Dun and Bradstreet, and Thinking Machines.

... and their VMS mentees - entrepreneurs:

• Tom Ricciardelli, founder SelecTech, (manufacturing injection molded products using recycled plastic.)
• Ben Vigoda, founder Lyric Semiconductor signal processing computation in CMOS, blogs here
• Joshua Feast, founder Cogito Health, speech technology applied to behavioral and mental health research.
• Alan ...(MIT'05 chemistry), entrepreneur

... more comments from MIT VMS participants:

Entrepreneurs

• Tom Ricciardelli : if you feel confused, reach out; mentors give me guidance I can trust; when I started, they helped me get my head together and distill what was best; you own the decision but confidence from a mentors makes a difference; you get back results from such a great team; the team is great at figuring out what works; they were always positive, al lot of genuine enthusiasm; it brings unexpected results, worth its weight in gold.
• Ben Vigoda : mentors are like free sandwiches; they are not all in business for making money; they are my impartial sounding board; mentors give non-judgmental enthusiasm.
• Joshua Feast : I felt supported; it helped me to avoid making mistakes; I think of the Lyric Semiconductors all the time, even in the bathroom; I can make 6:00 am calls; there is nothing you can loose
• Alan (?) : do it at the ideation phase; they gave me business insight; the network has made a huge difference - almost 100% comes from VMS; they have no vested interest; be honest with them, admit, listen to them; they support you , not the company; it gave me to move forward.

Mentors

• Alec Dingee, mentor : when we started, fast response to needs ensures the best reputation, we soon had 50 applicants; we don't try to judge whether a start up idea is ridiculous or a breakthrough - we educate entrepremenrs when their idea is plausible and they are committed.
• Sherwin Greenblatt : we get a moral commitment from participants to give back when they succeed but we have not yet collected funds
• Kathy Huber : I felt it was a honor to be admitted to interviews.
• Stan Bryant : treat people with respect; treat differently people to get the best out of them; treat them like they want to be treated (rather than the way you want to be treated)
• Connie Stack : Steve Smith is phenomenal; I am learning too; people chemistry takes time
• Jerry Socol : I try to get at the level of other mentors, the bar is set high; the more you put in the more you get out; be blunt, people are born to be flexible.

Other start ups

We met other MIT start-ups founders an could give them a 1-minute feedback :

• Jason Galvain, founder Artaic, custom mosaic art using robotic precision manufacturing.
• E la carte, content for touchscreens and mobile tablets in restaurants to order and pay from the table
• Istobe Management
• Doug Bright, founder, Istobe, customer analysis software for multi-channel retailers
• Kim Blair, founder iclub and Motus: sports and gaming motion capture and visualization
• Jerome L. Ackerman co-founder Skelscan, MRI technology for diagnosing osteoporosis and other bone diseases.
• Josh Kanner, co-founder Vela Systems, mobile construction project management software
• VSpace, 3D audio processing for teleconferences, using stereo to locate participants around as in a face to face meeting.
• Zac Warren, co-founder Warren Light Craft , light carbon kayaks.

Mobile world congress wrap-up

Mobile world congress, Barcelona, February 17-19 2009
A few notes on from the biggest mobile communications show of the year.

• Innovative start-ups are still coming out
• New user experiences in personal communications
  
• Tapas-enabled networking strong as ever

Innovative start-ups at Mobile peer awards
The other side of MWC, at Palau Musica, I sat on a jury panel with other industry colleagues :
Peggy Anne Salz, of MSearch Groove, Carlos Domingo, Telefonica R&D, Ariel Efrati, Venture Investments, James Whatley, from Spinvox. Mobile Peer Awards complements GSMA's Global Mobile Awardsbecause it focuses on early-stage startups and more informal reviews. You save 500 euros but you'll miss Jamie Cullum at the price giving ceremony. Both awards are nice however. We had an interesting debate after hearing pitches from "emerging start-ups" on communications, content, advertising business models and new devices. Here are some comments on our selection :
PopCatcher from Sweden got our jury award: their pitch is that mobiles should get fresh music every day freely and legally. How many of you have downloaded music last week without checking the rights? Well PopCatcher will listen radio for you, record it and split it into songs in your collection automatically. Our jury debated quite a bit whether that would please the record companies and their layers but anyway we liked having a TiVo of radio. Here is their value proposal:

fring from Tel Aviv won the MoMo community award : 500,000 new users per month worldwide deserves an applause. fringsters talk, chat, and interact with online communities (Facebook, Skype®, MSN®, GoogleTalk, Twitter, and Yahoo!) And fring have done operators deals such as 3UK, Mobilcom. That could have been our jury's choice as an "investor", but we decided that our vote would not add so much value to an already existing success.

Unkasoft Advergaming from Madrid won the audience award: they develop in-games advertising on top of popular video games - they really look at advertising from an end-user usability perspective and have business agreements with Microsoft and others; Perhaps the most important was the fun pitch that Jaime Lanchares, founder and CEO did on stage. This could give ideas to other entrepreneurs.
Aradiom from Istanbul, they provide a portfolio of mobile solutions developed using their own application environment - proven with 400K users; but our jury failed to detect the unique differentiation.
Getjar Networks Lithuania: we all love Getjar's appstore with 10,000 free mobile applications and over 20 million downloads per month; but with so many app stores around our jury foresaw some clouds ahead.
Keynetik from Washington DC: they provide motion SDK and applications for accelerometer enabled mobile; the jury had doubt about the success of the business model, but I like the “rock'n scroll" demo they have on done for the N95.

Mobintech A/S from Copenhagen: the company delivers display glasses to watch live Mobile TV; our jury missed a unique mobile proposition and a differentiation with competitors.
Soonr from Silicon Valley: they offer simple, secure cloud computing file management (35 types) across device (including iPhone, PCs and net printers) and networks, targeting SMB in particular; the jury agreed it's a great value but perhaps in risk of commoditisation.
In the start-up category, with a different jury team, Babajob.com took both community and jury awards on the Monday night’s Mobile Peer Awards in Barcelona.
Babjobs.com from Bangalore : is job website and mobile portal dedicated to connecting informal sector workers - cooks, maids, drivers, guards, etc.- and employers to India ; it's great to see applications that encourage development and economy !
GSMA Mobile innovation global awards
Mobile innovation global award competition took place over the year. The winners are :
Cootek, China won the champion title: software keyboard to accelerate typing a super-charged T9
Intivation, Netherlands : solar panel charger on the back of handsets for developing countries
Mobile Nordic, Norway : mobile CLI including directory search, SMS previews
WorldMate, USA a travel itinerary management application with mobile alerts

New user experiences in personal communications
It's not really new but 7 years after MMS launch, the industry tries to deliver platforms from what users want (sharing with friends using phone address book and social network contacts). I liked the [5] user trials feedback presented during the GSMA RCS workshop, the cross-device demo by Victor Donselaar of Movial and Aude Pichelin from Orange who serves as RCS chair and announced some more cross-operators trials. Why would it succeed this time ? RCS has 60 companies involved, mobile IM adoption in BRIC countries exceeds 10%, mobile social networking exceeds 20% in the youth segment. But of course their are challenges : Nokia partnership with Skype, new solutions as Voxmobili' s social address book on Google's Android, Sony Ericsson's silence on RCS handset release dates.


Tapas-enabled networking strong as ever
Yes, I also love Barcelona tapas and side events : Swedish beers was crowded, Bel Chica GoMo News blender party with Benna Roberts full of insider information, Nokia party intimate and I got the chance to meet nice professionals like Sonia Jain of Bluegiga (just after she told "OPK" all about their brand as viewed by young women and certainly we avoided discussing Bluetooth access solutions). And coming-out of the sauna at Hotel 1898 to attend TechCrunchTalk panel on mobile eco-systems featuring Mike Butcher and Peter Vesterbacka was fun. See you next year at the same place...