Sunday, November 08, 2009

Heroes of the Mobile Screen – 7 Dec 09 at the BFI Southbank, London

logo_building copy lge jpg Some of you may be wondering what I’ve been up to of late. Well, if you have, then I can reveal to you that I’ve been working on a new conference, Heroes of the Mobile Screen, which is on next month on 7 December at the rather wonderful BFI on London’s Southbank. And I’d love for you to spread the word (like our wonderful media partners), buy tickets and join the conversation. And I’m afraid this has taken our attention for the last few weeks which means we’ve had to cancel November’s Swedish Beers London event. Hopefully, this will all make up for it as this will be the *must attend* conference followed by the *must attend* after party. Well you know I like a good party!

The team behind the conference, Isabel Fox, Neil Robertson, Carlo Longino, Dominic Travers and yours truly are also involved in running Mobile Monday London, Swedish Beers Mobile Networking, Future of Mobile, Over The Air, Mobile 2.0 and Tech Media Invest events amongst other things.

The day-long event at BFI Southbank will differ from anything else around (at least that’s what we’re aiming for) and get the stakeholders of mobile involved in discussing the issues affecting them and their customers. Uniquely the event also has teenagers on stage to tell the industry what they want from their mobile, what they expect from their network operators and what’s most important to them in terms of their mobile life.

20051204 onEdition Copyright image 2005© Doug Richard, David Whitewood of Hotxt. For further info please contact: Isabel Fox 020 7062 1192 isabel@ballard-associates.co.uk This image is copyright the photographer 2005©. This image has been supplied by onEdition and must be credited onEdition. The author is asserting his full Moral rights in relation to the publication of this image. All rights reserved. Rights for onward transmission of any image or file is not granted or implied. Changing or deleting Copyright information is illegal as specified in the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988. If you are in any way unsure of your right to publish this image please contact onEdition on +44(0)20 7978 1459 or email: <info@onEdition.com> InmaMartinezPic1 - Copy jp keishimada jpg belinda parmar Heroes of the Mobile Screen is already attracting a number of high calibre ‘heroes’ with speakers and panellists answering the call from around the world, including Kei Shimada, JP Rangaswami and Kevin Marks, Belinda Parmar, Julia Shalet, Doug Richard and Harald Neidhardt are all confirmed. The speakers are listed here and the agenda can be found here.

Heroes of the Mobile Screen opens with a keynote from Kei Shimada sharing his experience of what’s happening in Japan and what we can learn from that here in the West. And continues with four core pillars supporting discussion throughout the day.

The money
What's making money, who's making money and what's being invested in and where the money's going to be in the future? The answers to all the questions we want to ask of successful mobile service providers and VCs.

The impact of social/location
What is the impact of social media and location technology? What do customers want, what are the business models, what are the solutions to privacy issues. Carriers are placing their bets in this area, but will they pay off?

julia shalet bw lge Teenage heroes
Led by digital youth marketing expert Julia Shalet (pictured left), this is a new format where we invite four companies to pitch their product, service or device live on stage to six teenagers and they tell us what they really think.

Real customers, real applications, real marketing
A double session with the first half covering customers and what they really want on mobile with a focus on women in particular with some new research and insight into what women want from Belinda Parmar of Lady Geek. The second half will cover mobile marketing and advertising, what's working, what's not and what's coming next.

I came up with idea around the event because we realised that most of the events I attend throughout the year all talk around the same subjects, with the same people and bring up the same issues, without resolution. It’s time for us to stop talking to ourselves, look out beyond our industry and make some changes for the better. I believe it’s important to engage our colleagues in marketing, web 2.0 and media as well as more of our mobile colleagues from throughout the value chain. The exciting stuff is going to happen when industries cross over – that’s where the innovation is. In putting the agenda together, we believe we have something that will appeal to a wide audience – whether you’re a director of marketing for an FMCG brand or a web developer toying with the idea of developing apps for android or iphone.  And to do that, we need to share real customer insight that we can use to make ours and others mobile lives better.

Tickets are now available online now for £99 (ex VAT and booking fee) at http://mobileheroes.net . We’ve kept the price deliberately low and it’s subsidised by sponsors who we’ll be able to announce shortly.

If you’re interested in sponsoring the event in some way, please get in touch with me via email.

If you’re interested in pitching your gadget, application or service to our teenagers, please email Dominic Travers to put your name forward.

We are keeping a waiting list for potential speakers and panellists. If you’d like to be considered, please contact me.

So get your tickets now and become a fan on Facebook or follow us on twitter http://twitter.com/hotms too.