MLOVE / IN BEESENSTEDT
29 June 2010
150 people somehow found their way to a castle in the middle of German nowhere for two very memorable days of mobile
Organisers Harald Neidhardt and Peter Giblin had said all along that they wanted to make MLOVE as unlike the usual 'talk at/tune out' conference as possible, and this was apparent from the start.
The first day went something like this.
Contagious attended workshops on Pre-emptive Functionality and Transient Ownership, two really interesting subjects that explored how technology will learn and predict you and your life patterns (with serious opportunities for brands to service and facilitate these patterns), and how we are defined by what we own. This referenced the short term ownership of objects such as temporary bike hire schemes, start ups like ZipCar and ultimately how mobile can aid all this.
It was decided this could lead to freedom of identity, with people choosing who they want to be and what they want to define them, shifting between identities and social groups as they please, not bound by the car they drive or the postcode they live in.
It was decided this could lead to freedom of identity, with people choosing who they want to be and what they want to define them, shifting between identities and social groups as they please, not bound by the car they drive or the postcode they live in.
Shaherose Charania, founder of Women 2.0, told the room people need to re-innovate the way they innovate, stating that innovation is far too flat and incremental with 'new' products just having a few extra features over previous versions.
Google's Nick Heller gave a great talk about open-ness, stating that giving data away can benefit you and your product and create a better user experience. He also talked about how a company can increase their market share, or collaborate to increase the size of the whole market, thus increasing the value of their existing share. The importance that mobile will play in creating opportunities and growth in emergent nations really hit home - according to World Bank, ten phones for every 100 people increases GDP by 0.8% in developing countries.
Google's Nick Heller gave a great talk about open-ness, stating that giving data away can benefit you and your product and create a better user experience. He also talked about how a company can increase their market share, or collaborate to increase the size of the whole market, thus increasing the value of their existing share. The importance that mobile will play in creating opportunities and growth in emergent nations really hit home - according to World Bank, ten phones for every 100 people increases GDP by 0.8% in developing countries.
Kazi Islam, CEO Grameen Phone IT blew everyone away with examples of the ingenuity and enterprise taking place in Bangladesh. He talked about people-driven innovation and peppered us with some incredible stats and inspiration stories from Bangladesh, here are a few:
+ 45% literacy
+ Dropout rate from 6th to 10th grade is 83%
+ Number of pharmacists is 6 for every 100,000
+ 60% of total labour force in agriculture
+ Less than 10% have access to banks
+ 40% mobile penetration
+ 85% transactions are cash based
+ 64% of mobile phone users are in the developing world
With such low access to banks, medical facilities and a high dropout rate from education it is clear mobile could play a desperately needed and transforming role.
Grameen Shakti is a project that employs women to promote, sell, construct and service solar panels in their village - it has created 50,000 jobs and there are now over 300,000 solar home systems in Bangladesh. Check out a great interview on Grameenphone, another incredible social intitiave from this incredible organisation, on Mobiad news here.
Echoing Shaherose's earlier thoughts, Islam stated: 'Innovation can mean developing a product to make it more affordable in other countries'.
Following this, the brilliant Rocky and Balls gave the crowd a much needed afternoon break. The two pretty, terribly talented young things who made a song about Facebook for fun have become a genuine YouTube hit, amassing 5000 subscribers and nearly 700,000 channel views - look out for a Contagious interview soon.
Beverley Jackson, a senior marketer for the Grammy Awards talked us through the five mobile devices she lugs around to keep connected, and explained how a piece of music becomes the soundtrack to different situations in her life, whether getting changed in front of the mirror before dinner, or running out in the park and needing an aural kick to step up a gear.
'When I'm trying to work out how to engage audience, I don't think about the celebrities I've got there, I think about who is watching this, the fans. There are only 18,000 people in that room, we need to bring it online, to everyone'
A line in the presentation that really struck a chord with the audience was 'life happens around social experiences', if you look at the big winners at Cannes this year you might notice a little of that magic in them.
After a white themed dinner party we made our way out the back of the Schloss to be blown away by an incredible projection onto the building by the Projektil crew, check out the video above.
The second day kicked off with two great talks from Alan Moore of SMLXL ('I' needs 'We' to truly be 'I' - social media is built on the 'We'), check out his thoughts on the event here, and Allison Mooney of Mobile Behaviour, who dropped a few great stats in:
+ 70 economies with 100% mobile penetration
+ 1 of every 7 minutes of media consumption is through a mobile device
+ Haiti $8m of donations made in one day
+ 45% of American consumers made a mobile device part of their shopping experience
Jèrôme Nadel from Sagem Telecommunications talked about the new phone they have created with Puma - one neat feature is it tells you how many texts you have sent 'powered by the sun' from solar cell on the back of the handset, which can then be broadcast to your social network. www.pumaphone.com
Marc Mielau, Innovation Manager for Mobile Marketing at BMW got a lot of tweets for his comment that 'my BMW parked outside is not a car, it's a driving IP address' and went on to talk about apps working across multiple devices and contexts - e.g your weather app, calendar app, messages etc don't just have to be on your phone, these can be in your shower, on the fridge, the TV, the car you get into etc.
Richard Titus, CEO at Associated Northcliffe Digital, has real issues with the amount of information we are wasting, or in some cases destroying without realising what a powerful tool it can be. 'We're haemorrhaging data, it's leaking out of the system - only 5% is properly structured, we need systems to get the right data, to the right people at the right time.'
There has to be a shout out to Heather from ImageThink who did a great job of scribbling and visualising all the talks into coherent sketches, check out a few of them here.
After all the talks had wrapped up, we made our way over to the Future Cubes which had been assembled in a beautiful barn out the back. This was one of the absolute highlights of the event, the brainstorms in the cubes were buzzing with ideas and energy. Hilarious presentations ensued including one group rapping their solution, and then merging with another group to secure the champagne prize (controversial!).
After a candlelit dinner on the lawn everyone gathered around a toasty bonfire to destroy all the ideas and notes that were created - these now only live on in the minds of those who attended, but going on the calibre of these people you can be sure one or two of the ideas might just happen and really change lives.
After a candlelit dinner on the lawn everyone gathered around a toasty bonfire to destroy all the ideas and notes that were created - these now only live on in the minds of those who attended, but going on the calibre of these people you can be sure one or two of the ideas might just happen and really change lives.
Overall, this was an incredible event and hard to do justice in words - you had to be there! So many insights to take away - an amazing bunch of people, new friends and great memories, well done to the MLOVE team, we're looking forward to next year!
(And yes, someone did get the MLOVE logo shaved into their head, no money was involved but possibly some alcohol).
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this is so nice
The terms "online" and "offline" have specific meanings in regard to computer technology and telecommunications. In general, "online" indicates a state of connectivity, while "offline" indicates a disconnected state. In common usage, "online" often refers to the Internet or the World Wide Web.