Also this year I attended the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. For the first time I also watched keynote speeches on Mobile Live TV on my iPod. For the second time I used somewhat MyMWC, a social networking tool where you can send messages to attendees, arrange meetings and also plan meetings.

It was the fourth MWC event in Barcelona now and possibly the second last one if the GSMA decides in June for a new host city. I think though Barcelona is the clear number one choice for several reasons:

• they have the event now fully under control and learned a lot from the mess the first year, it is almost perfectly organized now
• although hotels jack up their prices by 2-3 times during the MWC event week, it is still possible to get somewhat reasonable accommodations a bit further away even if you book very late
• traffic in Barcelona is manageable, I think that both Paris and Milano totally disqualify on this aspect as already now these cities are way too crowed and an event like the MWC will bring the places into a entirely chaotic situation. Starting each morning in a traffic mess is really no good for any event and for doing business.
• Barcelona can offer nice weather in February. We had mostly sun, blue sky, and >15 degrees Celcius. In all other possible locations weather will be most likely really bad in February with Munich the worst. How this can put a damper on attendees moods you can see year after year with the German Cebit. I really doubt GSMA wants to reduce attendance rates by doing the event in very likely miserable weather location. That alone leaves Barcelona as the only possible venue place from 2013 on IMHO.

This week a client of us attends the LTE World Summit event in Amsterdam. It is the major LTE conference and also has a vendor exhibition attached to it. The volcano ashes from Iceland came back though and the Schiphol airport in Amsterdam is closed. I just exchanged an e-mail with one of the speakers who can not come anymore and I suppose many others will also not make it.

What a mess for the exhibition organizers, the companies who brought their booths and also the speakers who prepared themselves and all booked flights and hotels and set up business meetings.

I think there is one clear solution now that also will not cost too much:

1. Provide a web presentation event

2. Offer a virtual exhibition event using a social community platform, where the vendors can showcase their products still

This would be totally independent of any airport and flight closures and also would be relatively inexpensive still. The other alternatives would be to cancel the event entirely and reimburse the people. Or reschedule with the risk that it will again not happen and of course I assume that the costs would be way too high as well to make this a viable option.

Update: the event could - fortunately - happen afterall when Schiphol airport reopened on Monday afternoon. Still, virtual events are an alternative, a backup and most importantly extend an event to an all year around meeting place increasing the number of people attending. Real example: VMWorld Virtual Pavilion

This question is something I have been asking myself for quite a while, and a recent article in The Guardian writing from the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona reminded me of my own thoughts. Author Rick Wray said:

“Europe has become the ‘flyover states’ of the mobile industry,” says a ­senior European executive, referring to the disparaging term used to describe middle America by high-powered business travellers shuttling between California and New York.

“All the service innovation is being done on the west coast of the US, and all the manufacturing and technical innovation is being done in the Far East. All we’re doing is selling other people’s products.”

Quite frankly, it is not even a flyover state anymore since the traffic goes from the US west coast westwards to Asia. No need to fly across Europe. Rick Wray’s article is worth reading and I concur with his views but would like to add a bit more depth to it and look at some of the reasons, as well as what could be done.

The key reason is that IT, Internet and software innovations, a domain of the US for a long time now, is becoming the ruling power in the mobile landscape. The pure infrastructure business has been targeted by the Chinese government for more than 10 years now, supporting first Huawei and then ZTE, among a few others not yet widely known outside of China such as Datang. These companies profit heavily from government support and the enormous market growth in China, but are now also entering international markets everywhere.

Entirely busy with fighting these Chinese vendors, European infrastructure vendors focused on keeping their customers - the mobile operators - happy by providing more and more services to them (up to outsourcing the whole operation) but ignored the most powerful force, the end users. And that is what Google and Apple are after, the masses of end users, who will in the end decide what is successful. Some of the players have already dropped the ball, such as Siemens, first selling off its mobile phone business and then getting rid of its infrastructure business as well by forming a NOKIA-led joint venture. Now it seems they are trying to become a Chinese-style company shutting down one location after the other. But while cost cutting is inevitable for them, the real thing they should be doing is focusing on cloud computing, and getting extensively into innovative mobile service offerings that they then run for the operators.

They have one advantage that they could play nicely and that is the good long-term relationships with the mobile operators, who are facing similar pressures from the same US companies. The operators also own the networks - hundreds of billions $ worth of assets - and the clients using them. Something a company like Google would love to own, and use to augment their service offering. One note here: Google has the backend infrastructure already (data centers) but not the access networks - yet (for background info on Google’s latest FTTH project read here). I think there is also one other asset that I would play out: Google is seen as a threat by governments and increasingly individuals who simply don’t trust them. Operators - with their local ties to end users might have had customer support issues here and there, but at the least no-one thinks of them as a privacy threat; so this trust base could be used offering cloud computing services.

Mobile operators and the infrastructure vendors need to explore new business models and they also need to find a way to handle advertisements. The biggest threat I see for them though is the speed with which this transformation is happening. And speed has not been something they have been able to handle so far, mostly because their management do not understand the new challenges, threats and opportunities and what to do about them. Most importantly, they need to hire people for these positions who understand the IT and internet business and are not simply large company operational experts.

Now the world is growing together and even if the US president says in his speeches that America has to lead, I think big companies should not be seen as US-, Europe- or Asia-based organizations but as worldwide operating companies since none can survive by only serving parts of the world.

As expected there were fewer companies and also people attending but that turned out to be a plus for the event which seemed for once more manageable and under control than in the last few years.

There were a few other observations that I’d like to share:

Software is on the rise – no big news of course – for the very first time it became very visible or in fact hardware was hidden and not shown at all by the major vendors. I did not see one booth where boring racks filled with hardware and blinking LEDs was all there was. All vendors even if they sell hardware presented services, use of applications or high level benefits for the end users.

For the first time in 15 years, the award ceremony was open to all attendees and did not require attending the special – to be paid - evening event. 19 awards were handed out by Stephen Frey, who did an outstanding job moderating the vent. Interesting to see that the GSMA members awarded Steve Jobs with the Mobile Industry Personality of the Year award. This is remarkable not only because Apple does not even have a booth nor hospitality suite so completely ignored the event, but more so because the iPhone put many of the traditional mobile phone vendors under lots of pressure. Also mobile operators for sure see Apple with mixed feelings. Apple – together with Google - are forcing them to change their business models which means they have to think about how to monetize complete services and applications rather than reselling mobile phone connectivity only.

There were still some not purely data-focused but based on the good old voice service innovations that even won awards:

· Orange France high-definition voice

· Addafix GmbH with yellix – caller ID

Orange improved the voice quality in Moldavia by introducing an AMR-WB codec and plans to roll it out across Europe in 2010. They say that the quality of the sound is like having the other party in the same room. Of course only if that other party is on the same Orange network as well.

The startup company addafix Gmbh from Austria solves a problem that seems even more obvious but – astonishingly – has not been properly addressed at all by the mobile operators to date.

When one does not reach a called party the phone will display three or so alternatives that are closest to the current caller location. A service that seems quite obvious and something all mobile operators should have offered for a long time since at least triangulation as a means for determining the location of the caller is well known for about a decade and does not require GPS receiver chipsets in the mobiles. Such a service should immediately increase the revenue of the operators one would think. The free service is called YELLIX and can be downloaded onto your phone. Most smartphone platforms are supported.

Addafix was also the only company that won two awards this week in Barcelona. They were also a winner in the startup Mobile Premier Award on Monday, which was partly organized by MobileMonday who invited winners from different country organizations.

The prestigious mobile handset award was btw won by the Google Android phone from HTC: the HTC Hero with the Sense user interface.

For the very same reason that software is becoming the driving force, you can also see more software developer guys walking around with Jeans who attend sessions such as the Google Android Developer presentations. Once the news spread that Google again gives away a Nexus One to everyone attending, the lines at least quadrupled. Good freebees still attract the crowd. No change here.

Two companies that decided to not participate with a huge and expensive booth anymore were LG and interestingly NOKIA. NOKIA reportedly invited VIPs to a nearby hotel that they rented. Research in Motion (RIM) stayed at the premises and took lots of the LG space increasing its presence substantially.

A first attending the event was Skype who has also just announced a partnership with Verizon where thetwo will offer cheaper VoIP calls over the 3G EV-DO network. More such deals will be coming I think.

The discussion mostly heating up between the old telco mobile world and the PC/Internet players was who is going to pay for the to be expected all time record US$ 200 billion investments that will be required to install and rollout high speed mobile IP networks which is double what was spent on 3G infrastructure in the late 1990. Mobile operators seem to want to make sure that this time around they get a cut from the big new pie and not leave it to the Googles’ of the world alone.

Interesting times for sure are ahead also because of Eric Schmidt’s keynote speech where he announced a new Google mantra called “Mobile First”. Google’s top programmers are now concentrating on mobile as their primary focus. He said:

“The mobile phone is where computing power, interconnectivity, and the cloud converge and you need to get these three waves right if you want to win.”

I tried out this startup company’s service today and it worked very nicely. At first I was not sure what it might bring in addition to web presentation services such as GoToMeeting or Webex, but it soon became clear.

While GoToMeeting still has no smartphone app, which I consider as pretty weak, Webex has that too. MightyMeeting’s approach is to upload your presentations (the limit is 20 MBytes per presentation) and then run it from there. So it is the SaaS version of these two other web presentation tools.

What are the advantages of doing that? The biggest advantage I see is in being able to run an online presentation simply from your iPhone, iPod Touch, Android or other smartphone and not having to be at your laptop or PC. Of course you can run it from there, too. While it is also possible to run a presentation and advance the slides from your smartphone while your laptop is connected to an LCD beamer, I was not then able to select a full-screen view, which is not ideal of course as you always see the border of the program and the browser. The program is in beta so I hope they add full screen view as well in that operation. One can expect that they will add better usability and communication features such as VoIP (a basic chat function is already supported) over time too.

This tool is free right now. No idea how they plan to commercialize it. One approach could be to come out with an enterprise version that they charge for the same way the others do. MightyMeeting btw won the last event of Founders Showcase run by TheFunded in Silicon Valley where every 3 months about 200 entrepreneurs and VCs come together to listen to pitches from very early stage companies and then vote for the best one that evening.

Just came back from a week long trip to the heart of the tech world, Silicon Valley. It was unusually cold for December, at night even freezing. Now back in Zurich, it is snowing right now, which is more normal weather here for this time of the year. So what is going on in Silicon Valley? Following are a few personal impressions and views:

Startups continue to have a hard time getting funding, in particular if they are with more unknown VCs, as those might simply not get new funds from their institutional investors anymore who prefer to use the money for something else. If you are with a top VC firm, though, there should not be a problem. Focus is on getting revenue and with that proving that you have a viable business. Not so exotic for the rest of the world of course. It seems that Silicon Valley is becoming more mainstream.

There is still very interesting stuff being done that will surface in a few months from now and IPOs are being prepared as well, although not knowing if they will then really pull the trigger and go public. I have also seen startups who have just received a new round of funding and are now super busy with tons of work racing to be first in the market with new features. Such setups are fun to work for and reminded me of the high (and unreal as it turned out then) times end of 1999.

There are still the smartest and most ambitious entrepreneurs to be found here, it seems, but you also meet people who feel tired of the constant rush and begin to wonder if there are better things to do in heir lives than work.

Now if you are ambitious and love technology I am sure there are great opportunities and some that one only finds here. Being asked what they think about Europe, most will tell you that the focus is on Asia and China, and Europe is often seen as second priority. Of course this entirely depends on the product market, where some require a more mature customer base or where the conservative approach in Europe towards adopting new technology is easier to deal with than the super cheap but maybe not that advanced competition in China who can still sell there but not in Europe.

On a personal level I had some funny experiences. E.g. I clearly had the impression that food has got better. It is still about one third to half the price of what you pay in Switzerland and, when you choose to go to an expensive place, it will be a very pleasant surprise to get really excellent food. Competition and fewer people going out has led to this positive effect, I guess. I also discovered more of San Francisco on this trip. It is technically speaking not Silicon Valley of course but has now some also interesting startups and some tech companies (Adobe) who tap more into designer types than engineers. I really like the office space there in SOMA which are old totally renovated brick warehouses with wooden beams inside, which makes for a very pleasant working atmosphere. And one really funny fact I heard from an ex-colleague who works in San Jose but lives in San Francisco. He said that for a man looking for women you need to go to San Francisco as the ratio of men to women is still healthy there, while in Silicon Valley you find many more men than women, which also has a certain negative effect on their attitudes (details of that I won’t reveal here but I am sure you can guess :-))

I am sure you noticed it too. In times of economic challenges surprisingly many new things pop up around us. One might call it innovations but often it is simply using existing technology for the first time  and making it accessible to employees or customers. This is only at first sight surprising as one might think that companies put new things on hold right now having more pressing issues.
Probably most do I guess but the leaders actually don’t and use these times to gain some differentiation. Often in markets it seems where it is otherwise difficult to differentiate such as in the telecom industry.

This morning on my flight to Oslo I had such an experience too with an airline. Swiss, the local airline is showing lots of new things and promotes them heavily on billboards at the airport and also insight the planes on the LCD screens. Examples are:
- use of the new A330 fleet on selected routes to the US and Middle East
- super convenient first class experience
- mobile check in with sending your boarding pass that is then scanned in from your phone so no more printing of boarding passes anymore, available also in Germany and soon at man more airports

The mobile check in would have been possible since a long time but now it is introduced during times where also Swiss has to leave planes on the ground. But this is in my opinion the right thing to do especially if your business is in a commodity market. (of course with this service most likely they will save money too I guess by needing less personnel) And who will get out of this market slump stronger I am convinced is clear: the ones who used these times to offer better and differentiating products and services. By the way this does not only apply to products and services but also to the way you do product marketing. There are great new opportunities using online marketing tools such as private social communities to expand your out reach. Now is the time to explore and launch trials that are in full swing when the economy bounces back.

Today I attended for the first time the Swiss Comdays 2009. This event is organized by the Swiss telecom industry regulator BAKOM and brings together the Swiss telecom management to listen to 30min presentations on telecom topics the first day and the second day the talks are about the media industry.

In general I don’t like such talking events as they are a platform for great speakers and not surprisingly are ideal for politicians to show off. Now these Comdays were no difference, with one exception:

A group of utility companies presented in a side room of the event (all supported by the BAKOM) how they plan to roll out FTTx.
I found these talks much more interesting and informative and thought that they should better run such events at these Comdays where they pick one topic and have key stakeholders give presentations.
Now as it turns out Switzerland seems to become one of the first countries in Europe - after Sweden and Asian countries - where utilities will invest into FTTx network infrastructure and then open the network to service providers who offer then Internet, voice, TV or any other telecom/datacom service (Open access model). Of course this has not been an overnight decision but took as in the case of the Zurich EWZ utility nearly 3 years of discussions and at the end a “Volksentscheid” (people’s vote) meaning that they will now be investing 200 million CHF into a fiber network over the next few years. Also other utilities such as in Basel, Genf, St. Gallen and Bern have decided to do the same and formed a cooperation between each other where they will use/apply what the EWZ with its “Zürinet” learned and uses. Also they decided just last Friday to establish some common service rules which will allow them to share technical standards and possibly even OSS solutions reducing the overall planning/rollout/operations costs.
The local incumbent Swisscom acknowledges this development but of course does not really like it.
This investment is a good start for Switzerland to become one of the leading countries in the deployment of high speed broadband access via fiber networks all the way to the  homes, companies and organizations.
The work for all these utilities and many others who will now follow has just started, though, and there is lots of work ahead still. One of the things ahead will be e.g. to explain to the end users what high speed data actually means for them and why this will be needed. Not an easy task for this industry, which is more used to talking ICT lingo between experts rather than using easy-to-understand analogies. Maybe an online community site is needed to do just that and also bring the key stakeholders (utilities, telcos, service providers, system vendors, system integrators, regulator, politicians, end users) together on a discussion forum where they also find excellent information on this topic.

Ever so often I take out some older DVDs to watch them. Last night I picked one of my favorites, Out of Africa (from 1985, 7 oscars), with Meryl Streep, Robert Redford and Klaus Maria Brandauer. I asked myself then why is this such a great movie. Obviously great actors and one of my favorite actresses: Meryl Streep,  who plays a baroness from the “small country next to Germany”, Denmark. Bored, feeling trapped in a men-ruled world, she decides - strangely - to break out of it all by marrying “her lover’s brother” and following him to Kenya where the British were operating a colony at the time.

Here a list of what I think makes this a great movie and what you can learn from it if you are in product marketing and also trying to run a campaign that gets attention, makes a difference and will be remembered:

• Something unknown: Africa and what to expect there are as interesting for the audience as for Karen Blixen
• Story: clearly a great story is told in this movie, and in addition Karen Blixen is a great story teller
• Adventure: going to Kenya at the time was clearly a big adventure and I suppose one of the main reasons, next to the bad weather in England, why they went there
• Love: great love story, no great movie without that
• Freedom: flying above the endless colorful African grasslands and mountains must be a fantastic experience; I always enjoyed flying across the flat land expanding from the Silicon Valley to the Sierra Nevada in a small plane, but to do this in Africa must be even more stunnin
• Beauty: beautiful actors and landscape as mentioned
• Drama: love alone won’t be enough, only the opposite makes it like a real life story
• Women in work life: clearly Karen Blixen is in her time what many working women are in business life today: independence-seeking, competent, hard working, fact-oriented, apolitical, detail-observing, listening, good communicators, tough but fair…, an interesting subject for many, not only women

Enjoy the weekend.

Kenya picture, courtesy of Ben Heine.

I just came back from a 10-day business trip to the U.S. having been on the west coast mainly.
It is obvious that the economy has been hurting for quite a while now. This can be seen literally on the street with less traffic (relatively speaking only as it is still bad in peak times), areas such as south of Seattle where whole neighborhoods seem to be up for sale (hundreds of meters of For Sale signs) and stories of startups who can’t get any funding anymore at all, plus people struggling to find new jobs.
Still I got the clear feeling that the bad times have hit the bottom and that things are improving.
Also the latest financial results from companies like Intel or IBM show this clearly. Not to mention
the stock market where the NASDAQ had a big rise this week, so folks are speculating that it will get better too.
One ex-colleague of mine who used to live in Silicon Valley and went back to Switzerland 6 years ago, has decided to move back to the U.S. and bought a house in Mountain View for his family (3 kids) just this Monday. He told me that he got already quite a few job offers, which makes him believe that there are options for him. In Europe he could never find a challenging HW engineering job in the datacom industry and had the feeling that most Swiss companies he talked to were very stagnant, doing the same as they did more than 10 years ago and happy with that - but of course being hit hard now due to their inflexible business attitude. House prices are low so he might do quite well I think. Still, banks are asking for 60% down payments as in his case, which is ridiculous of course.

(Photo credit: www.pbase.com/camera0bug/image/13107594)