Socialight / blog+news

I’m excited to be speaking at the Internet Marketing Conference, part of Internet Week New York, this Wednesday. This year’s theme is “Mobile Marketing — The Next Evolution”. Socialight is looking at several models for paying the bills, including marketing.

To some, mobile marketing is a touchy subject. It is to me, and it becomes especially touchy with “location-based services” (LBS) like Socialight.

Some companies do it pretty well, some do it terribly. When done right, marketing content on your cellphone can actually be content that not only pays for the free and cheap services you use, but could also provide useful and enjoyable, targeted content. When done wrong, it can instrusive, spammy, feel invasive to your privacy, and be so annoying you want to flush your phone down the toilet.

I’ll be joining a roundtable with Peter Olfe, founder of Yojo Mobile (markers of MizPee!), Bob Page, Senior Director of Strategic Data Solutions at Yahoo!, and Lennart Svanberg, Producer of IMC. I’d like to cover marketing opportunities, data collection and privacy policies, and integration of marketing into services. If you’ll be there, stop by and say “hi”.

IMC New York 2008
Wednesday, June 04, 2008, 8:30 am - 5:00 pm (I’m on at 11)

New York’s Hotel Pennsylvania
401 Seventh Avenue (at 33rd St.)
New York, New York, USA

For the past few weeks, we’ve been playing with the exciting features the iPhone SDK exposes. We know that there are many other mobile developers in New York City that have been doing the same. We wanted to help organize an event where all of these enthusiasts could meet and share their knowledge.

So this coming Saturday, April 19th, we’re helping sponsor an informal event called iPhoneDevCampNYC at Polytechnic University in Brooklyn. It’s modeled after the BarCamp unconference structure and will bring together iPhone hackers from around the area. The breakdown of the sessions will be part-discussion, part-classroom and part-workshop/hackathon. This variety should provide a good experience no matter what your skill level or interest with iPhone.

We’re excited to meet everyone and look forward to some interesting discussions and ideas.

At next month’s SXSW Interactive festival which will be held in Austin, Texas on 7-11 March, I’ll be moderating the “Mobile Phones: International Devices of Mystery” panel on March 10 at 11:30am. The panel features an all-star cast of international mobile industry celebrities and is a must-see if you’re going to be there. If you haven’t heard of SXSW Interactive, it’s ground zero for the creative web, mobile, film and music industries. In short, all the things you love in one place.

This year, Mark Zuckerberg, Jane McGonigal and Frank Warren are keynote speakers and there are far too many awesome panels to see. Highlights include Andreas Weigend’s Science of Designing Interactions, Behind the scenes at the Onion News Network and the Africa 2.0 panels. It isn’t all panels and no play, as meeting amazing people is the best thing there. Don’t just believe us, New York Times designer Khoi Vinh says

“Every time I go, I make more meaningful, long-lasting business contacts and new friends in the space of a long weekend than I might in months and months in New York City.”

New York’s not that bad, but trust me - it’s well worth the trip. If you’re going to be there - let me know so we can meet up.

Dan and I are at the Dow Jones Mobile Technology Conference today and there’s a great buzz and lots of interesting people around. I gave a presentation on Socialight earlier today which was very well received and then we found out that TeleAtlas named us as one of the finalists in their LBS Innovators Series. Nice!

The highlight for me was the great panel discussion this morning about location featuring Darren Koenig from TeleAtlas, Isaias Sudit from Loc-Aid and Chris Ackermann from the Travel Channel.

Under the Radar | Mobility is an event showcasing the latest and greatest in the stealthy world of mobile startups. Here’s how they describe it:

Under the Radar | Mobility is your chance to see, hear, and meet key players in the mobile universe, from the elusive carriers to the content developers, stealth startups and the industry leaders. This is a forum for partnerships, dealmaking, business development, and growth opportunities.

You’ll see a collection of companies in areas such as mobile content/video; social networking; voice services; marketing and advertising services; and a host of enabling technologies. From the industry experts and pundits to the company presentations and demos, you will learn about the future of mobility - its challenges and opportunities from consumer adoption to monetization of services.

I’m going to be talking about how Socialight is changing the way we think about discovering things around us in the Social Networking track on Thursday.

Sneaky tip: You can get $100 off the registration price if you book before Wednesday 14. Do it. Do it now.

Last month’s hyper energetic Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco was a frenetic hub of intellectual activity, movers, shakers, wheelers, dealers and more technoscenti than you can shake a stick at. I spent a whole two hours there and it was fantastic. Never ones to sit still, those clever people over at O’Reilly decided to export the Web 2.0 goodness to Berlin and Tokyo, and I’m thrilled to announce that Socialight will be participating in the Berlin expo.

If you’re anywhere near Europe, hop on to one of those ridiculously cheap flights and go catch Simon Davis, CEO of Socialight UK on the Marketing for Mobile 2.0 Panel tomorrow morning (Wednesday 7 November). Simon will be in great company - sharing the panel with him is Marko Ahtisaari from Blyk, Justin Davies from Buddyping and Helen Keegan from Beep Marketing.

Other panels you should check out include Trends in E-Commerce with Andreas Weigend and Mehrdad Piroozram, and Mobile to Web and Back: Designing for People.

Next week Thursday, I’ll be in Chicago at Forrester’s Consumer Forum 2007 on a mobile social panel with Nick Tommarello from Urban Interactive and Vidya Lakshmipathy from Forrester. Here’s how they describe the overall conference:

Fueled by cheap devices and pervasive access, individuals are increasingly taking cues from one another rather than from institutions — a phenomenon that creates chaos for traditional brands, sellers, and media outlets.

Sound fun right? If you’re going to be there, come on over and introduce yourself.

Here’s a rundown of what’s coming up:

This Monday night, September 24th, we’ll be at the Web 2.0 Meetup here in NYC. But if you’re not in NYC, you can still catch the event. I’m told it will be streamed live so check the website.

We’ll be at the NMS Connect Conference in Boston on October 2. Registration is open for the event so register and come by. I’ll be on the Community Goes Mobile panel.

We’re part of what looks like a very cool panel called Introducing the Seventh Sense: Location Awareness at MIT/Stanford Venture Lab on October 16th.

And finally, there are a couple of events around CTIA in San Francisco during the week of October 22nd:

• We’re speaking at NAVTEQ Connections on Monday, October 22nd.
• We’re on a panel at SiRF Location 2.0 on October 23rd.

It’s shaping up to be a busy fall. We’ll probably be adding some European dates soon as well. Hope to see you around…

I’m speaking at the NYC Wireless meeting tonight at 7pm in SoHo. It’s open to the public if you’d like to attend.

More information here.

If you’re in NYC this weekend - do yourself a favour and check out some of the speakers / panels at the annual Conflux psychogeography/art festival, organized by Christina Ray and her Glowlab crew. If you have no idea what we’re talking about - here’s what they say:

CONFLUX: the annual NYC festival for contemporary psychogeography where international artists, technologists, urban adventurers and the public put investigations of everyday city life into practice on the streets.