Category archive: Personal

Tuesday, March 28, 2006

Thoughts on Guardian Changing Media Summit

I was speaking at the Media Guardian Changing Media Summit yesterday.

One of the topics discussed was “finding new ways to connect with consumers in a collaborative world.” It’s interesting to me that the focus was purely on “consumers and consumption,” as I believe that the changes we are witnessing at a societal level require us to think about these issues in a wider context.

"Thoughts on Guardian Changing Media Summit" continued...

Sunday, March 26, 2006

Meliá White House Hotel, London

My fiancé, Antoine, and I really needed a weekend with no domestic distractions or other forms of work, so on Thursday I booked us into the Meliá White House Hotel near Regents Park. (Yes, we stayed at a hotel a couple of miles from where we live. Believe me, we will do it again.) It’s a four-star, so pretty comfortable, but what really set it apart was the customer service.

"Meliá White House Hotel, London" continued...

Friday, March 24, 2006

EA advisory board member in the press

Tomi Ahonen is featured in two periodicals this week on the topic of mobile-TV convergence. In the American business weekly Barrons, he is quoted at length saying pretty much the same stuff he’s on about here at our blogsite, for example:

Tomi Ahonen predicts people will use their mobiles mainly for “snacking” on favourite TV content at idle moments of the day. The mobile phone will never become an alternative viewing platform, he argues, adding that the real challenge is for operators to create bold new TV services around the unique features of a mobile handset. These features, he says, include the ability to interact with, personalize and pay immediately for TV-related content.

Barrons, 20 March 2006

Unfortunately that issue is not free online, so you have to buy the issue to read more.

But if you want to read more about how to do 3G-TV, with several real examples of mobile-TV services and how the fourth screen differs from Cinema, TV and the PC screen, Tomi’s column in European Communications of Spring 2006, is worth a read. Tomi explains how to use his mobile service creation theory, the Six Ms, to build billable value into mobile TV services. Their Eurocomms website is open to access for all, so we warmly recommend visitors to to hop on over and read Tomi’s full column entitled “3G TV Convergence, the Personal Touch”.

But this is something I picked out that caught my eye

The fourth M is Multi-user, or extending into the community. A good example of a Multi-user mobile TV service is viewer participation in the form of SMS-to-TV chat. Launched in Finland in 2001, over the years it has evolved to SMS-to-TV dating as in Italy, SMS-to-TV games as in Malaysia and SMS-to-TV Rap the latest hit in Finland. But the most advanced concept of premium user-generated content on the mobile phone, broadcast live on TV, comes from Korea, on the Tu Media network. Last Autumn Tu Media introduced videoclip-to-TV chat. Any viewer could send their videoclips as premium-cost MMS messages to the broadcaster, and moments later these would be broadcast live. Your kid having a birthday? Shoot the video and turn on the TV.

To read the full column, please visit European Communications.

Tuesday, March 14, 2006

Techdirt Greenhouse

I’m just back from a flying visit to San Jose, California, where I attended Techdirt Greenhouse, an event put on by corporate intelligence firm Techdirt. It was a stimulating day populated with intensely clever, driven, and affable individuals talking about all things innovative in the technology business. Attendees included execs from Yahoo, Google, Microsoft, and Apple’s iTunes division. VC Jeff Clavier - who I’d first met at Innovate Europe in Spain last June - and Engagement Alliance advisory board member Hillary Johnson have more on Greenhouse.

The guys at Techdirt - Mike, Mike, Mike, Mike, and Dennis - are also prolific and extremely sharp bloggers. Check out what they have to say today about the increasingly crowded classified search market.

Tags: techdirtgreenhouse, techdirt greenhouse

Friday, March 10, 2006

Making companies pay for our time and attention

I’m in Los Angeles, and last night had dinner with fellow Engagement Alliance advisory board member Hillary Johnson and our friend Amy Alkon, a syndicated advice columnist whose work is carried in more than one hundred newspapers across the US. (If you think her column is a great chance to be influential, you should see what she can do with her blog.) In Amy’s spare time, she fights the good fight:

If I have a hobby, it’s being a part-time detective. I’ve tracked down one stolen car and the dirtbag who stole it, then tracked him down again and made him pay me his court-ordered restitution. Then there was my hit-and-run driver, whom I also tracked down, and had prosecuted. I also tracked down a friend’s birth parents, figured out who was e-harrassing another friend of mine and made the person stop. (The friend wanted to send a person an email demanding they stop. Naw. I instead looked up their corporate email policy—all the small print every big company puts out about not using corporate email for nefarious ends—and we sent the harrasser a screen shot of it. That was the last my friend heard from the harrasser, of course.

Amy might best be described as a customer justice advocate; that, however, might be missing the point. The truth is that with the tools now available online, anyone can take back control of their time and attention like Amy has. It’s not that difficult. Just ask the companies that Amy has forced to compensate her for the time they’ve stolen from her with their intrusive, annoying, and disruptive marketing tactics. As she says:

The point isn’t really to make money off people (although I’m going after a telemarketer next, and because of the guy’s arrogance, plan to sue him in small claims court for my posted prices), it’s to show people that they just can’t just walk all over people with impunity and play out their lives as if they’re the lone member of the ME! ME! ME! generation...I’m all for freedom of speech...such as the freedom to hire somebody to stand on public property to ask us to give them our phone numbers so people in a boiler room can irritate the crap out of us. The freedom I’m not for is the freedom to hijack a telephone line I pay for to interrupt me at dinner time (or any other time) to try to sell me something.