SMS Text News regular (and world-renowned foosball player) Ben Smith has been living with 3’s X-Series in the UK and his travels for just over six months. It’s been his ‘regular drive’ - his everyday handset and a home for his main work and personal number. What does he think about it? Here’s his long-term road test of the service.

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11:30pm: My alarm sounded and I got out of bed. I’d decided to take a few hours sleep in the early evening prior to heading out on the road with the Texperts team. I hadn’t been told much about what to expect so as I sat in the back of the cab toward Leicester Square, I reflected on exactly what I’d got myself into.

“Keep the night of the 13th free, OK?” asked Anthony D’Alton of Parys Communications, Texperts public relations team.

“Right,” I said, marking off 6.30pm - 10pm in my diary.

A few days later, Anthony was on the phone again, “Are you still up for this, Ewan? 11.45pm start, OK?”

11:45pm? Geez.

A few more days later and Anthony called to explain the launch concept — take a few London landmarks and project some Texpert images on to them.

Nothing too raunchy, Anthony had promised (I had visions of Gail Porter being projected on to the houses of Parliament again, this time holding a mobile phone or something).

11:45pm - I arrived at the car park by Leicester Square and within a few moments found Anthony, looking slightly apprehensive.

Whilst we waited for the others to arrive, I asked him if he was really planning on projecting something on to the MI6 building. He smiled and gave a deep nod, as the projectionist chap arrived in an ‘unmarked white van’.

Just the sort of thing you want to be parking outside the MI6 Headquarters.

“The projector’s in the back,” he explained, “We just need to turn up, open the back doors, switch on the projector and we’re done,”

Right, I thought, surely if you can shoot light out of the back of a white van, you can shoot missiles. The ever vigilant authorities won’t be that impressed, will they?

I began to have visions of explaining to some polite, yet perfectly hostile MI6 agents just why I was carrying three top of the range handsets, especially when their sister agency is forever putting out statements encouraging people to watch out for suspicious people who have lots of mobile phones (on account of pay-as-you-go handsets being cheap and useful methods of remotely setting off bombs).

My mind fast forwarded to a dark room, one grey light shining in my face, with some Etonian demanding that I ‘drop the I’m-a-blogger–bollocks’ before pounding the desk in front of me screaming ,’We know who you’re working with MacLeod.’

“All I was doing was blogging the launch, officer,” I responded, handing over my SMS Text News business card.

“Got press credentials, eh?”

“No, I’m a blogger. I don’t need credentials. I just do it.”

Oh dear. I didn’t feel that good as the photographer had just arrived to explain to all and sundry that he was already on the MI5 records but that his press pass would get him out of most sticky situations. Right. Stand well back, then, MacLeod.

23:55 - Sarah McVittie, Chief Executive and co-founder of Texperts rocked up looking serene, but at the same time, bursting with excitement. Her colleague, Giles Adams, Marketing Director, arrived shortly afterwards with our transport — a funky Golf courtesy of Streetcar. Here’s Sarah listening as Anthony outlines the night’s strategy:

00:00 - Midnight arrived and after a bit of pre-game discussions on the landmarks to target, Wembley Stadium, Battersea Power Station and, of course, MI6 were settled upon: -

00:05 - Before we departed, Sarah showed off her special Texperts T-Shirt that she was planning on wearing in some of the photos:

It was at this point that I realised that we weren’t just going to be shooting light on to the side of London landmarks, but that Sarah would be — balls of steel, I tell you — standing in front of the projection to have her photo taken.

Oookay. Into the car.

As we drove over to Wembley, I began quizzing Sarah on the re-brand from 82ASK. Although, I’ve covered that in a previous post, I negated to mention that they’d done some extensive testing of the 82ASK brand vs the Texperts brand — with 40% of people not quite getting how the alphanumeric monicker translates into an actual shortcode. It’s a bit of an arse if you spend some money to reach, say, 100 people — only to find that 40 of them don’t know how to transact business with you. Much better to swap to a different, clearer shortcode — 66000.

00:25 - Wembley Stadium arrived.

The projectionists wasted no time, pulling up the VAN, opening the side door and flicking on the machine:

One side of Wembley Stadium was instantly covered in the ‘The Search Is Over’ slide:

Impressive! Sarah and the photographer got to work. She stood in front of him and he began to take some shots of her and the projection in the background over her shoulder.

Every few minutes, a car would drive by in the distance. The projectionists, hot wired for any Police activity, were continually looking over their shoulders. At one point, they spotted some security guards in the Wembley Stadium staring at the projection, no doubt wondering what to do.

“They’ll be on to the Police now,” said the elder of the projectionists in a knowing series of grunts.

Uh oh. I looked round at the empty road, wondering just exactly what I was going to say to the Police Officers demanding to know what I was doing. It it accurate for me to point to the Texperts team and say, “reporting on what they’re doing”? Heh.

02:15 - With Wembley photos complete, we hopped over to Battersea Power Station. The projection van had already arrived and setup as we joined them:

Just a brick building, the power station was a wicked subject for projection:

It was exciting to see the super-dooper-bright bulb light up the sky:

Mucking about sorting out the bulb in the projector:

The chaps swapped over the slide to the ‘Licensed to Find’ one:

Incidentally, this was going to be the one that was earmarked to be projected on to the MI6 building.

When they were changing slides, I snapped the full power of the light:

Cue time for a bit of a break. I took a pic of us at the Petrol Station nearby the MI6 HQ:

(Left is Anthony of Parys, the balls-of-steel photographer, then Sarah’s red coat and then me. I didn’t shave you see, I thought it was more in keeping with the fashion for that evening).

03:30 - We arrived at Vauxhall Bridge:

Nerves were turned up to 11 as we sat in the car waiting for the projectionist guys to do their drive-by. I nearly jumped into panic mode when a Police car drove straight by the van as they began setting up. It continued driving on. Geez.

Vaxuhall Bridge was absolutely empty… making a van (about to arrive in this image) look rather conspicuous.

I turned my back and then, shit, there it was. One top right hand corner of the MI6 building, bathed in the Texperts slide:

Wow. The photographer snapped away quickly and we all marveled — for minutes — before the projectionists quickly turned off the projector and sped off in case any severely unimpressed Spies fired top secret yet highly effective lasers out the MI6 HQ windows at them.

There wasn’t time to fly across to Liverpool Street Station (amongst other locations) to check out the special Texperts logos etched into the pavements. Here’s one:

There’s a chap that Texperts found who will do this sort of thing — he actually CLEANS — the pavement using some wicked cleaning fluid, and thus etches the Texperts logo out of the pavement dirt. Neat!

Here’s another one at Cambridge Circus:

As 5am rolled on, I began to come to a halt. We said goodbye to the visibly relieved projectionist team and then watched as poor Anthony trod off to the Parys Communications office to begin getting the message out to the mass-media. The Texperts guys dropped me back at my place and, after a quick email-check, I was in bed sleeping. And really pleased I wasn’t spending the night in an MI6 detention centre.

If you’d like to see parts of London at 5am in the morning, then check out this video I made. I played around with the new Apple iMovie:

I’m doing some liveblogging this evening. It looks like it might go on ’til dawn.

I haven’t been told the location(s). Just the company concerned. They’ve asked me to go along and document their activities.

So if you see a chap wandering the streets of London sporting a Nokia N95, E65 and E61 and also, a notepad and pen (it’s still quicker, isn’t it?), then that’ll probably be me. Do say hi and ask me for a business card too!

Continuing on from my previous post this morning, it’s time to document the stunning successes of the SMS Text News foosball team.

I volunteered Alex and Ben as our foosball team (for a few reasons, mostly based on my ridiculous foosball performances in the past — plus this let me video the carnage).

Playing as Northern Ireland, Alex and Ben got off to a super start.

First up was a match against the Creative Translation team (I think this is their site. Wanna see part of the game? See the vid below.

That’s SMS Text News’ own Alex and Ben Smith doing battle there. The result? 5-4 to Creative Translation. Conveniently they had to leave so they were gracious enough to award the win to us.

Brilliant! One up!

Next up we played Sonus. Total arse. Watch two minutes of total slaughter here:

We lost 5-1 with the Sonus girls chirping, “You’re losing to two rubbish girls!”

NEXT.

We took on Edleman PR and won 5-3. Excellent. See the performance here:

Finally, we managed a 5-1 win over one of the Webit PR teams:

Unfortunately this performance record didn’t put us anywhere near the quarter finals so we retired to the sofas.

This also gave me an opportunity to catch up with more people at the event. For example, I talked briefly to Jenniffer Mitton of Frank PR who reckoned that the event was brilliant. As did Sole Chirco of Metia PR who told me she really liked the venue — it was a super choice — and that it had a fantastic vibe and atmophere. Couldn’t agree more.

I need to remember to talk to Jason Bird of Say Communications because they represent Page One, Vyke and Ikiro. I want to find out what those companies are up to in more depth.

It was great to finally meet everyone at WebitPR. Adam Parker, the CEO, was very complimentary…

I’m ever so impressed that you allowed the Sonus team to win by a significant margin. I thought that this showed a generosity of spirit that epitomises SMS Text News.

Top man!

Last night I was at the WebitPR Kick It event in Shoreditch, east of the City of London.

WebitPR are the kings of online press distribution and monitoring, particularly when it comes to Web 2.0. It’s them you turn to if you’d like to get your release out to tons of interested journalists, publications and bloggers. They’ll also let you know what’s being said about the release too. A critical requirement for any public relations firm. Ostensibly, the evening was a celebration of Webit’s continued success — and, at the same time, a super opportunity to play Foosball.

The venue specialised in foosball tables. Teams of two foosball players were solicited for a foosball world cup. There were three of us there from SMS Text News — myself, Alex and Ben Smith. We have two Bens at SMS Text News. One is Ben Smith, the author of extensively researched and considered mobile perspective. The other is Ben Harvey, who writes our Friday 3pm column, much loved by many SMS Text News readers (with the exception of the Portugese Government and various other institutions Mr Harvey has knocked to the floor with his verbal assertations).

Time for a picture.

It wasn’t long before the E61s came flying out. I snapped this one of (left to right) Patrick Smith of Sonus PR, Alex and Ben, all on their Nokias checking mail.

Patrick is still hugely enamoured with his device — he demonstrated it’s rather beautiful screen by showing me a picture of his photogenic son Joshua:

Screams were eminating from the back of the venue when I arrived and said hello to the WebitPR team. I caught sight of Giles Shorthouse and finally said hi. We’ve been corresponding for ages by email but hadn’t ever done the name-to-face thing. Likewise with Zoe — from whom I regularly receive many Webit updates across the week. I bumped into new hire, Philip Lunn who, when I demanded what handset he was using, showed off a sporty looking Sony Ericsson K610 featuring a fetching picture of his girlfriend, Emma.

Screams continued to fly across the venue from the foosball tables in the background as I bumped into Stephen Davies of PR Blogger fame (You know you’ve made it in social media when the first ‘Stephen Davies’ link on Google points to your site). Stephen is the chap behind the uber-famous and utterly well-read prblogger.com. He’s also the Social Media Manager for Webit and told me that “Webit have got big plans in the upcoming weeks. Stay tuned.” Very interesting.

Here’s a pic of Stephen capturing the foosball mayhem:

I couldn’t ignore the regular screaming coming from the back of the venue. I finally found out that it was from the SonusPR girls, Helen and Lauren. They were having a wicked time having discovered their foosball skills were pretty good. With each goal they scored, they threw their hands in the air, screamed for joy and totally intimidated their competitors.

Sonus thrashed Roy and Ellen from Edleman PR 8-3. I had to get a quote from Edleman on that. I sat down next to Roy, Ellen, Monica and Mats. They admitted defeat and gave this explanation:

We have limp wrists and we are in no way a representation of the rest of the Edleman foosball team.

They weren’t wrong as Edleman put on a strong showing across the night. What a shame for them, though, that, as the representatives for Motorola, they all have to walk about with some of the shittest handsets on the planet. Poor Roy showed off his Razr, while Ellen admitted to having an SLVR. They agreed with me that the new Bourne Identity handset, the K8, is a much better looker. Mats and Monica fared better in the handset department, both sporting Sony Ericssons and a Blackberry between them.

It’s always interesting seeing what handsets the folk in High Tech PR are using. Take Kaizo PR, for example. I bumped into Simon Gomes who swears by his ultra old, but ultra reliable Nokia whilst his colleague James Mitchell looked on in horror.

Here’s a snap of Simon’s handset as proof…

Then, at the other end of the spectrum is Helen Gough, one half of the Sonus PR team, who wasted no time in showing off her gorgeous new U600 Samsung:

“It’s PINK!” she explained, when I asked what prompted that particular purchase. Good call. It’s a handsome looking phone.

In going along to the Webit PR event, I expected to come into contact with a lot of public relations professionals who worked with some exciting mobile companies. I wasn’t disappointed. I connected with Jason Bird and Francesca from Say Communications (Patrick from Sonus confused me a little by repeating the word ‘communications’ at Francesca over and over when she was telling me her company name. It took me a while but I got it!).

There was, by the way, a saddening lack of awareness on the part of many public relations professionals I spoke to about the possibilities of web 2.0 and social media. I took every opportunity to berate anyone who would listen, demanding to know why they weren’t distributing their releases with Webit via Webit’s new 2.0 social interface.

This is version 1.0. Version 2.0 is coming soon. I’ve a lot more to publish, including more photos and videos. Check back shortly.

I’ve got a lot of photos and videos transferring at the moment from the Webitpr.com event this evening. I met a load of new people, plus I did a lot of names-to-faces, particularly with the Webit team themselves. I have, for example, been receiving emails from Zoe there for — well, at least 7 or 8 months — and hadn’t actually met her.

Anyway, lots more shortly.

Are you going to the Webit PR foosball event tonight? RSVP really quickly to Giles (giles at webitpr.com) if you’re coming along. It’s at Bar Kick, Shoreditch High Street, E1.

I shall be there, business cards in hand, trying to beat Giles and Co at Foosball. I am, despite being a pretty competent goalkeeper in my time, rubbish at Foosball.

I think I will watch the agencies knock each other out and see if I can identify which agency is sporting the best handsets.

I’m thinking that Sonus PR might well be winners in that category. Whenever I meet Patrick or any of the team there, each one of them is typically overflowing with Treos and Nokias.

There’s a reason I deal in virtual reality and not physical reality. I wondered why people were posting comments about a ‘Wednesday’.

It turns out that the 22nd of August is actually a Wednesday, not a Thursday as I had intended. I had to have this pointed out to me. Idiot MacLeod.

So, if you intend coming along, please make a note that free beer is Thursday night (23rd August)… not Wednesday. My stupid mistake.

I’ve been working hard on a venue and a ‘concept’ for the SMS Text News Unlimited Drinks evening. The date is almost certainly August 22nd.

UPDATE: Ok, so I got the date wrong. It’s actually August 23rd — the THURSDAY night.

One of the most interesting tasks is asking venue owners just how much an unlimited drinks evening will cost. A lot of them have projectile vomitted in my direction at the mere hint of the word unlimited, so I will need to manage expectations there I think.

However, I have engaged uber-professional make-it-happen Juno Productions to help organise things. A weight off my mind. They’ve been checking out some very nice venues. We should have something fixed by early next week.

I like the concept of a few tables laden with goodies to play with, dotted around the venue. If you’ve got some goodies — hardware, applications or the like, that you’d like to show off, talk to me and let’s see what we can do.

If you haven’t already told me you’re up for coming along, please email me with the subject UNLIMITED DRINKS = YES so I can put you in the right folder and then get you an invite shortly. As long as you work in mobile, or somewhere related to mobile, AND as long as you don’t have some dirt cheap 4.99 mobile phone in your hand when I meet you, you’re invited.

Had a quick note from Max, the organiser of networking event FILMOBILE, which takes place this Friday in London. Here’s the scoop.

- - -

FILMOBILE is a project which aims to create a dialogue between the industry, filmmakers and artists working with mobile devices through a variety of on and off line events.

In order to kick-start its activities, FILMOBILE is organising a networking event in the Centre for Excellence at the University of Westminster on the 29th June. The program includes presentations by leading industry practioners, artist,
photographers and filmmakers. The talk is followed by an open discussion and wine reception.

Alfie Dennen - mobloguk
Daniel Florêncio - filmmaker
Davide Scalenghe - Current TV
Dennis Morrison - Zzizzl films
Romain Forquy - photographer
Max Schleser - FILMOBILE

- - -

It’s being held at the University of Westminster Centre for Excellence this Friday, between 5pm and 7pm. To get there, just jump a Bakerloo, Circle, Hammersmith & City, Jubilee or Metropolitan line tube to Baker Street - you’ll find the venue directly opposite at 35 Marylebone Road. Or tap in NW1 5LS if you’ve got satnav - but be warned parking is only available for those with special needs.

If you’re interested in going, drop a note and RSVP to info@filmobile.net - don’t forget to mention SMS Text News.

Here’s a great proposal from Jeremy Bygrave, the MD of mobile messaging company Mediaburst. That’s a pic of him there, just in case you were wondering. Anyway, If you’re a media, advertising or brand agency, or have responsiblity for brand promotion, give them a call and they’ll come round to your offices and educate you and your colleagues on how to best use SMS for marketing purposes.

Here’s what Jeremy had to say:

“There are now over 56 million mobile subscribers in the UK and Mediaburst is possibly the only mobile messaging business that can help advertising, marketing and media agencies to best engage and interact with them. Participants in our free SMS MediaDAYS will be able to tap into our expertise in big brand mobile promotions and then offer even greater service to their brands and brand masters.”

Interested? Give Jeremy and his team at Mediaburst a call on 0845 050 0000 - tell them when you want their training team to turn up at your offices, and how many of your colleagues will be involved.

Link: 3GSM World Congress is no more - www.mobile-ent.biz

OK so I know Ewan isn’t exactly the world’s greatest fan of mobile conference 3GSM, but saw this snippet of news and thought I’d rattle off a quick blog entry.

From February 2008, 3GSM is no longer. It’s now called.. wait for it.. Mobile World Congress. Wonder how much money they spent coming up with that change?

Apparently it went something like this. Originally, it was called GSM World. Then 3G was the latest ‘cool technology’, so they tagged that onto the front, and came up with 3GSM.

Now that 3G is not exactly today’s news, they’re sort of full circle, with ‘Mobile World Congress’. Incidently the 3GSM World Congress Asia will also change it’s name too, to the rather snappy ‘Mobile Asia Congress’.

Of course if they don’t allow bloggers in to future events then people like us will just have to wish we were there, staying in hotels that cost the earth, attending mind-numbingly boring corporate ‘parties’ and hob-nobbing with a bunch of people with expense accounts bigger than the GDP of quite a few African countries.

Link: Remember 63336: Free AQA 63336 gig

Bit short notice, but if you’re in London tonight and fancy some great music and wicked cocktails pop along to the AQA 63336 party in Camden.

It’s being held at UNDERSOLO, which is downstairs at Bar Solo, 20 Inverness Street, NW1. Doors open at 7.30pm for an 8pm start, and kicking out time is 2am. They’ve got some of the bands and artists involved in the AQA 63336 album appearing live, including Emmy the Great, My Albatross and The Brent Flood.

Registration is free - just follow this link.

Link: openPR.com - Bluetooth Marketing gets the crowd into the club

This is rather nifty. Matthias dropped me the link here and suggested I take a look. A new nightclub used some bluetooth technology to beam its logo to hundreds of VIp guests as the club’s opening launch party. All very well, right? Ok. The kicker is this. The club’s management said that if you showed the logo on your handset, you’d get in free at the next party two weeks after the launch. You were welcome to forward the logo to friends if you wished.

How did they get on? Well, a fortnight later, 800+ people turned up at the club with the logo on their phone and got free entry. Wow!

Here’s the gossip —

Dresden, Germany, October 30th, 2006. On August 26th the new Bavarian nightclub „WS Club“ ( www.ws-club.de ) organized it’s opening party, using Bluetooth Marketing as a new kind of mobile communication. In cooperation with Feelgoodradio ( www.feelgoodradio.de ) the Bluetooth Hotspot „Bluebot“ ( www.bluebot.eu ) developed by Haase & Martin GbR (from Dresden, Germany, www.haaseundmartin.de ) came into use to broadcast the nightclub’s logo for free.

During the party all guests could receive the logo by their own mobile phones to save it as a background image or to forward the image to friends by Bluetooth again. The idea of this marketing campaign was to offer free entry for those people at the next „VIP Free“ party who bring along the „WS Club“-logo with their mobile phones.

Among all guests during the „VIP Free“ party on September 9th about 800 people came showing the logo on their mobile phones at the entrance and all were getting the free entry as promised at the opening party two weeks ago. The Bluetooth campaign was a great contribution to a successful event because days before many guests forwarded the logo to one another using the Bluetooth interface of their mobile phones. In that course the voucher was multiplied independently to advertise the new club in an easy way.

The possibilities of a widely known Bluetooth radio standard can be enhanced enormously when choosing a skilful marketing campaign. Once the campaign has started it can keep going on automatically.

Link: Swedish Beers Tonight In London at MobHappy

As I’m in town for the Symbian Smartphone Show, I plan on stopping by, so here’s your chance to meet the less-European half of MobHappy in a rare contintental appearance.

I was going to drop a note over to Carlo since he’s over here — he simply has to have a Swedish Beer or two — then I saw read that he’s already confirmed. Woosh!

Link: Swedish Beers

Swedish Beers – Tuesday 17th October, 6.30 pm at the Nordic Bar. Swedish Beers is held in London at the Nordic Bar at 25 Newman St, London W1 – (nearest Tube – Goodge St or Tottenham Court Rd). The Nordic Bar’s web page is at http://www.nordicbar.com/. You’ll find us in the back bar.

Yes, that’s right, I will be blogging live from Swedish Beers courtesy of my wickedly useful Sabifoo-instant-messenger-blogger that I can use via the Blackberry.

My idea is to a) catch up with people and b) do quick fire blogs about anything that’s interesting and mobile related. I reckon that could be quite cool. If you’re in the area, come on along. I’m thinking 3-4 sentence blogs complete with a link or two.

Walking along Newman Street, you’ll see the Nordic Bar, right? It’s in the basement — so walk down stairs and if you’re there after about 7pm, it’ll probably be quite crowded. Don’t worry. The bar is all along the left of the establishment. It’s not that wide so there’ll probably be people that you need to negotiate. Get yourself to the bar and get served by some of the absolutely gorgeous women (and, no doubt, men) and then as you’re waiting, look casually to the right……. all along the corridor. Swedish Beers all happens at the back you see. Get a drink and wander along toward the back — there’s a bigger room there where it’ll be kicking off. The password to get in is: V0daf0ne. The zeros are important.

You’ll see Helen and Steve surfing the crowds. Go ahead and say hi — particularly if you’ve never been to the event before. They’re totally friendly.

Locate me, thrust you right hand forward, shake mine then gis-a business card so I can blog you. I’ll be the one with the navy jumper and jeans. (Not in pinstripes today). You can spot me at 100 paces because I rarely drink alochol, ergo I’ll be the only one in the room with a coke.

PS I was only kidding about the password.

I am thinking of heading along to Swedish Beers — with my SMS Text News business cards in hand. However there’s a lot going on tomorrow so I’m not sure if I’ll make it.

If you’ve got a bit of time and you work in and around mobile, I recommend being there.

Swedish Beers, the mobile networking evening, is on next week… might see if I can get along.

Swedish Beers – Tuesday 17th October, 6.30 pm at the Nordic Bar.
Swedish Beers is held in London at the Nordic Bar at 25 Newman St, London W1 – (nearest Tube – Goodge St or Tottenham Court Rd). The Nordic Bar’s web page is at http://www.nordicbar.com/. You’ll find us in the back bar as usual.

There is, alas, no website for itThe website is here and the evening is sponsored by the thoughtful team at Bango.

There’s a rather wicked event coming soon produced by gorgeous Deirdre and team at NMK. 

It’s called New Directions in Mobile and if you haven’t caught the run-down, there’s a veritable who’s who presenting, including mobile marketing expert Helen Keegan, who dropped me a note to remind me about it.  I might see if I can get along as it’s nearby. 

It’s on the 3rd of October starting at 1pm.  Not this week but next.

Here’s the intro:

With more and more businesses incorporating mobile into their marketing mix, is mobile the right place right time medium that marketers dream of? How can businesses stay abreast of consumer behaviour and make the most of the business opportunities that mobiles present?

This afternoon event will examine some of the key developments in mobile: how mobile and wireless technology has changed the way we do things, trends to watch and future opportuntities, and key innovations and business models.

Have you come across the term Mociology?  I hadn’t, but, I like the term.  I wonder if you’ll be able to take a GCSE in Sociology and then one in Mociology soon?   Paul Walsh, CEO of Segala, (Web Accessibility & Mobile Testing Experts) will be revealing all on the term. 

Helen’s discussing business models for mobile content and services — with a marketing perspective I’m sure.

Steve Flaherty of Ketai Culture is talking on mobile innovation — this from a man who, the last time I talked to him, was involved in something like 5 bleeding edge huge mobile related projects.  He knows his stuff.

That’s your first session.  While your mind is still spinning, the second session will arrive in the shape of John Carney of Marvellous Mobile presenting a recent case study.  Not sure on what, yet, but it should be good.

Jonathan Bill, Head of Category at Vodafone is next up. I imagine that means he’s head of the mobile category?  It doesn’t quite say on the site.  Wait, I did a google.  He’s head of content category for Vodafone UK.  That should be illuminating.  Plus if you’re looking to get your company in front of Vodafone, it’ll be worth the price of the ticket alone to grab Jonathan for a few seconds of elevator pitching. 

I…well… I don’t think I should go along to this event myself — I was thinking about it closely but I’d probably self combust if I found myself in the same room as anyone from Vodafone who isn’t brandishing a £1k credit (or a few Vodafone branded N93s) for my recent and wholly outrageous international data bill.   I seriously have an issue with them still.  Unresolved issues.  I can usually suppress them with the aid of copious nurofen, round the clock on-site medical care and a psychiatrist never no more than 5ft away from me holding a flipping huge syringe filled with fast acting neuro-relaxants.

BREATHE. DEEPLY.

Alfie Dennen is last up — but by no means anywhere near least.  He’ll be talking about his company Moblog UK, which, I reckon, will rightly impress the viewing audience with real world examples of how people are using mobile technology.  No one’s more qualified to discuss consumer moblogging in this country than Alfie. 

It looks like a rather exciting event and I imagine the networking will be very valuable.  If you’re in mobile and you’re London based, see if there’s still tickets available.  £80.  Should be very worth it. 

It’s taking place at 01Zero-One which, at the rather interesting end of Soho, is really centrally located and very well specified, plus there’s a Pret round the corner too.