Audience Thoughts From the Good Ideas In Mobile Panel

This past January, PSFK held a Good Ideas Salon in London bringing together the most forward-thinking tastemakers, innovators, and experts from around the world to discuss key areas steering innovation and opportunity.  In addition the the good ideas presented, we wanted to hear what our audience had to say, so we’re doing a series of posts containing feedback and comments from the event sourced from blogs, magazines, and twitter.  We’ve distilled the commentary, now you tell us which is the best idea…

PSFK gathered some of the leading creative minds in the mobile space to talk about trends and ideas. Moderated by Piers Fawkes (PSFK), the Mobile Panel included Dan Hon (Six To Start), Mike Butcher (TechCrunch UK), Matt Jones (Dopplr) and Jonathan MacDonald (Ogilvy). From the comments on blogs and Twitter, this proved to be a very popular session.

Ian Fitzpartick’s takeaway was that we shouldn’t see the subject of mobile as one of technology:

Mobile is about people, not technology, and the intersection of these two will be increasingly-defined by applications and tools that are uniquely combined by people to suit their individual needs and desires – not provided from a single, global source.

Helge Tennø who came to the event all the way from Norway also picked up on the same themes.

According to the panelists Matt Jones of Dopplr and Jonathan MacDonald of Ogilvy at PSFK’s Good Idea Salon London, mobile is all about a patchwork of situated software solving people’s personal and local desires.

Matt Jones spread the concept of Mobile being all about Place, and place is where culture meets location. The future mobile landscape will be a range of small ideas, small applications all working together to create a global mesh – as in contrast to many of today’s developments, where the focus is on solving massive global solutions.

Jonathan MacDonald added that we need to de-silo mobile and start talking of what it does, not what it is. We need to think about what people do in their lives, it’s about every single one of us.

Trying to build it into a more commercial articulation I would say that (1) Mobile is about people, and they stuff they do, where, and how they do it … (2) People care about what’s closest to them.

With this sentiment, John Willshire saw a theme that ran through the day:

The panel on ‘Good ideas in London’ (Matt Hardisty, Matt Brown, Taryn Ross, Justin Quirk) enthused about the quality, diversity and energy of creativity in London at present… which then fuels the work of the creative people who work there. So as well as being inspired by work, you should be inspired by the city and culture around you. Crucially, the London they described was a place, not just a location.

What’s the difference?

Well, as Matt Jones of Dopplr described later on the Good Ideas in Mobile panel, “Computers and Phones are great at ‘location’. But we describe where we are as ‘place’ – where culture meets location… computers can’t do this easily, they can’t really relate in terms of place.”

Looking back on quite a few of the talks during the day, you can really start to see how important the place vs. location issue is going to become…

Jemima over at the Guardian picked up on the subject too:

Matt Jones is frustrated with the disembodied way that we engage with mobile devices: “beautiful shiny plastic things with some gangly bag of mostly water tapping away on them”.”We should be an embodied person in the world rather than a disembodied finger tickling a screen walking down the street. We need to unfold and unpack the screen into the world… We need to understand the difference between location and place. Computers and mobiles are very good at location, but we describe where we are as place, where culture meets location. Our whereabouts. Pirate maps, and scribbled landmarks. As long as we still have a bit of energy and money, that’s where we going.”

Suzie Shore at Juicy Info seemed to find the panel defied her expectations. Instead of predictions she found candid discussion about what mobile is and how we should work within it:

The ‘good ideas on mobile’ panel continued the focus on lifelogging. I was hoping for some pearls of wisdom about the ‘next big thing in mobile,’ but there wasn’t much chat on specifics, and perhaps rightly so. As Jonathan Macdonald (Ogilvy) firmly pointed out, good ideas in the mobile space today should centre on the utility it can yield to the consumer, as opposed to focusing on the latest gizmo. Clearly, these guys were ahead of their game and the curve in terms of technology adoption, but as they duly pointed out, their behaviour is a far cry from your average consumer. My takeaway was that good mobile ideas are the ones simple enough to make an impact on the everyday consumer.

Jemima from the Guardian also noted the focus on Apple’s iPhone:

The potential of the iPhone has only just begun; if they could be fitted with all kinds of instruments and be turned into a giant global censor; measuring carbon emission, temperature and more. He cited Berlin-based startup Aka-Aki as one of the more convincing mobile social networks which connects you to the people around you in a more passive way.

The Monday after our event it snowed and a lot of people in the UK were ’self’ stranded at home. John Willshire was reminded of something Matt Jones said when he noted all the photography of the snow being posted on the web.

If you went out yesterday too, you’d have no doubt been aware of just about everyone carrying a phone camera, compact, digital SLR or video camera too… we are becoming so used to capturing every moment we can. As Matt Jones said at the PSFK conference, we each carry a ‘remembering machine’ with us wherever we go.

And the ‘hum’ of information around the snow was intense; twitter, facebook updates, text messages, phone calls, emails… it was only when one event suddenly channelled every piece of communications in the same direction that you realise just how connected we are, and how easy it is to share a common experience.