Organizer Message
I'm very pleased to say that the final schedule is now complete. It's been a lot of work. 85 of the confirmed sessions can be found below.
This may well be the last Emerging Communications Conference & Awards that is open to the public at large. The 2011 event may be by invitation only. If this is the case, we'll honor all past participants (including those who attend next week) by automatically granting invites to future events. However all other future people wishing to attend will need to receive an invitation (or apply and then be assessed according to criteria which would be set in due course).
The first conference back in 2008 attracted 280 people with no marketing and no sales team, relying on community word of mouth to propagate to those who would benefit. 2009 attracted 360 under similar circumstances. If ticket sales this week continue today and tomorrow at the same rate, next week may be larger still. I'd like to put a break on those numbers, to protect against further escalation at the 2011 event. I'd rather lock the numbers at 400 maximum and then spend research and effort selecting the audience instead over the coming years.
I think this direction had been coming for a while without me quite realizing it. This comment ("you are totally, and utterly underselling the first day....To be completely honest, this line up would sell itself. I'm not sure the casual reader of the schedule will pick this up") following the last update prompted me to start rethinking. To date I've ran it as a service, primarily intended for friends. I've ensured that I've not been paid a single dollar (by ensuring that any surplus is spent back out on attendees). Likewise with the event next week; which is why I've just authorized an extensive WiFi upgrade as well as free drinks on all three nights.
I've saw each event as a masterpiece, each with a theme. Although 90%+ of people report on feedback forms that it exceeded their expectations, I don't think a substantive amount are connecting all the available dots and understanding the "piece" as a unit. As such, there is more room for value to be created. I'd always assumed that people would apply their intellectual horsepower to back engineer, to extrapolate so as to make valuable connections and inferences. But it turns out that a significant proportion of people simply don't have the time and/or would much prefer some formal "pre-chewing" and post-event "chewing", delivered in a way for quick and actionable consumption.
For example I'm totally jazzed about mobile augmented reality (AR) since it came of age at the end of 2009. So much so, the last day is dedicated to it and now it's stretching to a 12-hour day! It's going to be amazing and will be the first such commercial gathering. But in conversation with friends privately recently, it was evident that nobody (except Martin Geddes) understood the very likely tight coupling between AR and "communications". Such a tight coupling offers immense opportunities for a substantial percentage of companies in the mobile/telecom/Internet communications space. Let me tickle you. AR has been about overlaying the "online space" (e.g. media/information) onto the "offline" world (AKA "real world"), i.e. providing visual metadata. But significant opportunities are up for grabs (in the greenfield sense) by applying to communication services.
AR could be used as the interface to interact with the "digital space", in our case, communications services. For example you could "see" AR created photo frames in your living room of people you cherish. If one of these people calls you, their photo frame could flash and it's general color state could indicate how long ago since the last call from that person (if it's too long the photo frame can vanish). If you wish to create a conference call, you could "pick up" two such photo frames and knock them together. You can keep building out from there, e.g. have texts (SMS) displayed as sticky notes on the photo frame. Already magazines are beginning to embrace AR and it's a logical step to add in communication services, e.g. advertisements have an AR component such as an AR overlaid Twitter feed. This is all entirely possible. It will generate significant value and it's just the beginning. The question is where would your company fit in such a value chain? Whom should you partner with?
In the same veign, it's worth noting that Michael Gervautz very recently became a Director of Business Development at Qualcomm, following Qualcomm's recent acquisition of Imagination Computer Services (he's speaking on Day 3). Google made its first ever UK acquisition recently, by acquiring Plink. The two founders will work on Google Goggles (the lead engineer of Google Goggles keynoting the start of day 3).
Now aside from people wanting more "human processing" type services in conjunction with the event, the value of events is going down. The number of events is mushrooming and it's creating more noise relative to signal. Many of these events seem to be seeking ever higher numbers in order to use the attendee count as the primary metric to sell to sponsors. You know when "real" value is being driven out when competitions are held to win material things, from hotel and flight coverage to a new car or "VIP" passes are thrown around free. I think the future of events is changing and both attendees and sponsors will migrate from such scattergun type events towards more niche, well-defined, focused events, particularly those that are best at fostering the most valuable conversations.
All in all, I see benefit by putting a brake on attendee numbers for 2011, and the start of ongoing audience curation, as well as the introduction of pre, during and post-event support materials Etc. At the other end of the spectrum I'd also like to see the creation of Emerging Communication "unconferences"; small scale, low-cost/low-entry fee type events around various cities, with a propensity towards developers, hackers and general all-round grassroots innovation.
No final decisions have not been made and I look forward to hearing feedback in the coming weeks, particularly because the event has always been community-driven.
I look forward to seeing many of you next week. If you have any questions etc. I'd contact me in the next few hours because I'll be going to spend sometime with my 3-year old in Austria before going over to London then over to San Francisco.
Regards,
Lee S Dryburgh (Founder)
PS Only 1 hour night tutorial slots are left. If you're interested in tendering to provide such a tutorial, email me directly at lee.dryburgh AT eComm.ec
PSS The mobile application award winners were recently announced, see 5:40pm-6pm on Day 2 here.
Confirmed Talks
- Adam Broitman, Circ.us, "The Information in Everything: The Augmented Future of Communications"
- AdrianAvendano, Meetforeal & CrowdScanner, "Mobile Application Awards - CrowdScanner"
- Alan Duric, Telio, "Telio Launch"
- Albert Hwang, PhedHex.com, "Spatial Computing: Designing an Interface for our Bodies"
- Amber Case, CyborgCamp, "Solid to Liquid to Air: Cyborg Anthropology and the Future of the Interface"
- Anders Sundelin, CIP Professional Services, "Beyond Squeezing Lemons: The Future of Collaborative Business Models"
- Anselm Hook, MakerLab, "Who Will Own Our Augmented Reality?"
- Anton Yudin, Digital Worlds Institute, "The Wizard is Us: Symbiogenesis by Networking Part 2"
- Arturo Sinclair, Digital Worlds Institute, "The Wizard is Us: Symbiogenesis by Networking Part 1"
- Assaf Biderman, MIT, "What Can Cities be Like When Everything Talks"
- Barak Hachamov, My6sense, "The 6th Sense Accelerator: When Mobile Meets Intuition"
- Ben Newhouse, Yelp, "Sci-Fi to Sci-Fact: How Computer Vision Will Change AR and the World"
- Benjamin Joffe, +8*, "Your Reality is Augmented"
- Benoit Shillings, Myriad Group AG, "Evolution of Mobile Applications: Role of WebKit and High-End Browsers"
- Blake Callens, Zugara, "Bridging the Gap Between Desktop and Mobile Augmented Reality"
- Brian Harris, New Mexico Attorney General, "Yesterday's Wire for Tomorrow's Apps?"
- Brian Selzer, Ogmento, "Mobile Augmented Reality: The World Is Your Playground"
- Brough Turner, Ashtonbrooke, "US National Broadband Plan"
- Bruno Uzzan, Total Immersion, "AR Today and Tomorrow"
- Carlos Kirjner, Federal Communications Commission (FCC), "The National Broadband Plan and the Future of the Internet"
- Christine Perey, PEREY Research & Consulting, "Generating Revenues with Mobile AR: The Ecosystem, Business Models and Metrics"
- Clark Dodsworth, Osage Associates Consulting, "Context Is King: AR, Salience, and the Constant Next Scenario"
- Craig Walker, Google, "Communications Heading Into The Cloud"
- Cullen Jennings, Cisco, "Identity for Global Communication"
- Dan Miller, Opus Research, "Recombinant Communications Manifesto: Piecing Together the Disaggregated Infrastructure"
- Dana Farbo, Acrossair, "A View to a Future; Beyond the Hype of Mobile Augmented Reality Applications"
- David Burgess, Kestrel Signal Processing, "A Telephone System for the Next Three Billion"
- David Marimon, Telefonica, "Visual Recognition, the Future of Mobile AR browsers"
- Dawn Nafus, Intel, "An Anthropologist's Eye for the Tech Guy: Emerging Market Opportunities in a Post-BRIC World"
- Deborah Estrin, UCLA Computer Science Department, "Participatory Sensing"
- Di-Ann Eisnor, Waze, "Navigation Rising! A Deep Look at Live Mapping and Augmented Reality in the Car"
- Donovan Jones, Counterpath, "CounterPath Launch"
- Elad Barkan, Bzeek, "The Future of Mobile Networks: Offloading Congested Mobile Networks with a Software-Only Approach"
- Eric Kabisch, University of California, "Liberating AR from Basemaps, Markers and Overlays"
- Eric Klinker, BitTorrent, "The Future of P2P"
- Erik Bovee, Mobilizy, "Applying WWW Best Practices to AR"
- Ge Wang, Smule/Stanford, "Making Music with the World on the iPad and iPhone"
- Hartmut Neven, Google, "Searches Originating Inside and Outside of your Head"
- Ivan Franco, Ydreams, "Advancing AR - Beyond Labels"
- Jan Linden, Global IP Solutions, "Mobile Video Communication - iPhone & Android Lead the Way"
- Jared Goralnick, AwayFind, "With 500 Ways to Communicate, Why Should a Customer Choose Your New Offering?"
- Jason Kolb, Cisco, "A Glimpse Into the Future if XMPP and Wave are Successful"
- Joe Burton, Cisco, "Ubiquitous Collaboration: The Next Wave of Productivity?"
- John du Pre Gauntt, Media Dojo, "Story as Software"
- John Hagel, Deloitte Touche, "Infrastructure Shift: The Long-Term Challenge of Change"
- Jonathan Rosenberg, Skype, "Social Sharing 2.0: The Rise of Real-Time"
- Jose de Castro, Voxeo, "Beyond Voice - Designing an Open Communications Platform"
- JP Rangaswami, British Telecom, "The Rise of the Open Network: Or How I was David Isenberged into Submission"
- Julia Tsao, yU+co/Fair Enough, "Designing For The Future"
- Keith Lofstrom, Server Sky, "Orbiting Data Centers for Global Connectivity"
- Kimmo Sainio, Cellictica, "Mobile Application Awards - Trippo VoiceMagix"
- Kristian Simsarian, IDEO, "From Distraction to Real Life, Humanizing our Mobile Future"
- Marc Smith, ConnectedAction, "Mapping Mobile Social Networks with NodeXL: Finding Key Users, Groups, and Locations"
- Mark Anderson, Bordertown Labs, "Building Mobile Augmented Reality Applications with 3DAR"
- Mark Headd, Tele-Works, Inc., "How Open Data and the Gov 2.0 Movement are Changing Communications With Government"
- Mark Rolston, Frog Design, "Strange Days. How the Computing Experience is Turning Inside Out"
- Martin Geddes, BT, "Cloud Communications (and How to Destroy a $700bn Industry for Fun and Profit)"
- Matt Miesnieks, Layar, "AR and the Mass-Market Business Opportunity"
- Matthew Szymczyk, Zugara, "Building Business Models Around Augmented Reality"
- Michael Gervautz, Qualcomm, "Vision Based Mobile AR - A New User Interface For Mobile Applications?"
- Michael Zirngibl, Ringio, "Ringio Launch"
- Mike Rowehl, Mobile Monday Silicon Valley, "Mobile Application Awards - Introduction"
- Moray Rumney, Agilent, "Macro Trends and Predictions in Mobile Broadband"
- Oren Michels, Mashery, "Disruption and Death: Telephony, Open Platform and Network APIs"
- Pamela Kerwin, Geovector, "Advancing the Business of AR, A Practical, Commercial Solution"
- Paul Brigner, Verizon, "US National Broadband Plan - Paul Brigner Introduction"
- Peter Meier, Metaio, "Junaio and the Unifeye SDK Mobile Development Platform"
- Phil Wolff, Reef9 Media, "Walk and Talk: Augmenting Conversation"
- Piers Finlayson, MetaSwitch, "Bring Your Own Wireless: How Smart Mobile Phones are Revolutionizing Wireline Customers"
- Richard Bennett, ITIF, "Internet Gone Mobile"
- Richard Whitt, Google, "Our National Broadband Plan: The End of the Beginning?"
- Rob Spence, Onscreen Director, "Eyeborg - Terminator Lives"
- Robert Rice, Neogence Enterprises, "Future Vision: Decade of Ubiquity (Augmented Reality 2010-2020)"
- Sanjeev Agrawal, Aloqa, "Mobile Application Awards - Aloqa"
- Shai Berger, Fonolo, "Customer Experience in the Call Center: Can the Leaks in the Pipeline be Fixed?"
- Steve Hoffman, ThinkHuge, "The Future of Augmented Reality"
- Steven Feiner, Columbia University, "Where AR We Heading?"
- Susan Estrada, FirstMile.US, "US National Broadband Plan - Susan Estrada Introduction"
- Tom Katis, RebelVox, "Everything You Think You Know About High Performance Military Communications is Wrong"
- Tony Fernandes, The UE Group, "User Experience: A Possible Roadblock to AR Adoption"
- Tracy Rosenberg, Media Alliance, "US National Broadband Plan - Tracy Rosenberg Introduction"
- Troy Davis, Cloudvox, "Towards Painless, Free, Open Phone Data"
- Usman Haque, Pachube/Connected Environments, "What's Wrong With 'Reality'?"
- Yohan Baillot, Independent, "Seeing the Future of AR Through Digital Eyewear"
- Zhao Lu, Orange Labs, "STATUS: Bringing User Presence To The Voice World"
Next Event
- The Emerging Communications Conference & Awards takes place next week at the San Francisco Airport Marriott. The regular pricing category has been extended for 24 hours (it's not been activated yet, register here before it is). The hotel is still accepting the greatly discounted group rate but rooms are now getting limited.
