21st Century Global Summit Part I

Once a year Telcoland goes away to a nice place and contemplates its converging digital navel for 2 days - this year it was Goodwood. Instead of writing a blogpost, I thought I'd Twitter it as it happened (Live Microblogging) and then thought I'd put my Twitters up as a "Lifestream experience" for you, dear reader. This is Day 1.

The Future of Networks

GEMAYA – Google, EBay, Microsoft, Amazon, Yahoo, AOL – are attacking over the top using the free ride on Telco pipes – not a sustainable play.

Bell Canada guy saying the pipes are filling up from video - have to charge for heavy usage to fund upgrade, everybody hates us

There will not be 2 mega ISps and one Google, there will be increasing infrsastruture standardisation and service fragmentation

Context search will kill Google (dominance)

Next major change is going to be sensory networks...

The Inevitable Session on Green ICT

Obligatory talk on climate change and Green IT now, but bright side is its Good For Biz apparently. Or am I getting too cynical 

Datacentres now have higher carbon output than Airline industry - never mind stopping flying, get off the Internet ?

If UK stopped producing all carbon emissions this year , it would be equal to the change in China’s output.

Green means giving up something we don't want to - we want green palliatives, not hard answers -

There isn’t enough water on earth for the biofuels projections the GreenLot want us to have.

I must log here that the "Pro-Green" platitude play got heavy pushback from a lot of people - not because people were anti-green per se, more that they felt a lot of the "Green" options were immaterial, politically correct or out of their control.

Hints for Entrepreneurs

Cognitive Dissonance - an irrational inability to take in rational input - all entrepreneurs need it or else they'd never do anything

In developing countries, mobile data is far less useful as- people are still illiterate (ie voice is key)

For UK Entrepreneurs / Startups - you have to pretend to be US or you get no action - get a 415 number and a box address.

c 95% of UK startups that do not fail are trade sales to US companies

Ex 3i guy - UK tech entrepreneurs stuff tends to be low quality, low calibre, low innovation. But who is to blame - VC, Entrepreneur, Ecosystem

His solution – de risk by only funding companies who have already got contracts with major corporates or are spinouts that get a supply contract with parents.

Panel on Mobile Innovation next - if thats not an oxymoron

M:Metrics says that sideloaded music is smaller than legal music on mobile in Europe among women. Eh - are women that honest?

Mobile vs WiFi – wifi/wimax is far better, 3G is has better coverage - interesting battle developing - cheaper to expand wifi than improve 3G?

On Internet, c 95% of PC's are standard, mobile is a total mishmash - huge barrier to mobile apps - 80% iPhone users browse Web, 24% of other smartphones

Mobile Video media - short form media seems to be the only thing that is working today.

Killer failure for Apple 2.0 - no keyboard!

The Future of Advertising

Don't expect it to fund your Web 2.0 startup as advertising itself is changing since its broken.

Ad funding for Web 2.0 companies - Ad agencies will not compensate Co's for poor economics in creation, distribution etc - need alt. funding from other streams

Two 80/20s - swop media and production budgets and create the content, and spend 20% of marketing spend on innovative stuff from web

Future of advertising - increasing personalisation of lower and lower value items - from motorcars to M&M's

The Future of the Web

Big fastest growing trends on the broadband Next web after social media - (i) Local Services and (ii) 3D Environments.

Major barrier Issues with 2nd Life et al - around IP, regulatory obligations, low volumes and metrics are hard to quanitify from

BT in virtual worlds - noting they did a lot of virtual world stuff 10 years ago, no demand then, starting now - dusting off the patents….

Discussion on "what is the point of Virtual Worlds" - one thing it does is audience shifting for musicians - but what are the volumes?

Key with New Media is to demo the use cases - "Sold more Slingboxes in airport terminals than in any other way" from

Slingbox up now - allow a fairly healthy cynicism for takeup of any media service to the mass market - Sky took 7 yrs, £40m for Sky+ now

The Future of Social Media

In a Socnet you have to "write yourself into existence" - Brands are only useful to the extent that they can help this happen.

Brands do not belong in pure social media - behavioural targeting does not work in advertising, as if its properly targeted it can't be Ads

Consumers value the telling of the story of Me – music is “referential” in that it tells the story of Me, the music, brand etc itself is not the point

Sales of music per artist in volume terms in China, India dwarfs what we are used to in EU, is at US levels or higher.

Music Industry on ScoNets - willing to try out new models outside of US, EU - too much money / heritage legal issues involved. Trying to manage their from

Most used area on Bebo is photosharing, similar for Facebook etc. Music is not consumed on site, its more a means of expression / social belonging ...

....but don't fool yourself that viral will work on its own - need a lot of DM to make it work as there is so much other noise.

Ex Bebo'er Angel Gambino - major issue is helping people find the content they want in a long tailed world - word of mouth still only effective way

I asked the inevitable question on metrics etc - got the standard response that old metrics don't understand new media. No advance there then

Now its done, reading the "Lifestream" laid out like this is interesting - its not as structured as a writeup, and it only takes points that really impressed themselves rather than the whole session (ie the points were novel or controversial to me). Be interested on your take on how this impacts vs a writeup.