Paul Walsh, the Irish Opportunist

Firstly, there are no missing features in the new iPhone. Well, as far as Apple is concerned anyway. They haven’t done anything different to any other handset vendor - how else are they to encourage consumers to buy the next release and the next and then the next… Nokia is actually the worst offender in my opinion. When has Nokia for example, ever released a device with everything you ever wanted - without the need to auction one of your internal organs to buy one. Which brings me onto my next point, how can anyone have anything negative to say about the new pricing structure? It’s free on certain tariffs. I think the same skeptics want everything for free in life and forget that every other vendor charge through the nose for high end devices.

It’s ridiculous (embarrassing even) to hear an audience applaud Steve Jobs announce a flush socket for a headset. It’s something that should have come in the first release. Get a life.

I’m a loyal customer of Apple but it’s just one (of the smallest) players on the field. It might be a George Best of our industry, but it’s still one player. I’m looking forward to the rest of the vendors playing catch-up to help encourage mainstream adoption of Web enabled phones at a reasonable price.

Regarding an improvement to the development community ecosystem I’ve been reading on the Mobile Monday email list - I don’t see a major change - major change occurred with the release of the first iPhone. For some reason, most people need to see a screen shot before they’ll believe what’s coming. The first iPhone changed the development community’s perception with respect to ‘how’ consumers will consume content. I remember when the *vast majority* of public comment from the mobile development community on mobile Web for example, was “it will never happen anytime soon, long live WAP’”. That was up to the actual release of the iPhone. After which, the comments were “it’s too expensive”, “it’s too slow”…

It’s not rocket science. Nor does it take a fortune teller to see that mobile technology is not only changing at incredible speed, but that the speed at which change occurs, is also gaining momentum all the time. Hope that last sentence makes sense Furthermore, connection speeds are improving, pricing is coming down and the interface is improving. So, nothing different to the landscape changes we witnessed on the Web during the mid 90’s.

I’m delighted to see a new 3G enabled iPhone, as mine, which currently supports EDGE (slower connection speed) only works satisfactorily when there’s an EDGE connection available. Without one, the connection speed is either too slow to download email or browse the Web, or it dies altogether. The new version is also more supportive of the development community. This means you won’t have to unlock your phone to download non-Apple applications. Check out Twinkle if you’re a Twitter user - it’s fantastic. The downside is that we’re going to see Apple-specific applications, meaning developers have yet another non-standard device that needs to be ported.

The BIMA Awards (BIMAs™) now rightly take their place on the top shelf of prestigious Awards, alongside the BAFTAs, the Brits and the Oscars.

To win a BIMA, therefore, is truly the highest accolade in a very competitive world.

BIMA has never shrunk from its responsibility to reflect the very highest standards of creativity and innovation and caused controversy some years ago when it considered that the measure of work in one particular category was not of sufficient merit to be awarded a winner’s trophy. More recently, the industry applauded BIMA’s decision when it announced that the judge’s favourite – the BIMA Grand Prix – was the winning entry in the student category.

The Association is run by 12 strong Executive team with me at the helm as Chair. I know I know, I don’t look old enough

Until now, the Awards Committee has included only members of the Executive. For the first time ever, the Committee for 2008 is made up of Executives and non-Executives. This demonstrates how the Association is more engaging and transparent.

The bold move is already proving to be the right thing to do. The enthusiasm amongst the team is electric. Watch out for a new format. If you thought it was difficult to win a BIMA before, wait for 2008. It will be easier to identify where your work fits in, but we’ve halved the number of trophies. Why sit through 21 announcements when you could be enjoying a fantastic gala followed by a cool after-party.

So, here it is, the committee…

BIMA Awards Committee

Clare McDonald

Committee Chair
Creative Director, Interactive Media Agency, Bskyb

Having started life as a print designer of unwearable computeraided fashion, Clare realised that her passion for the pixel needed to be directed into a relevant world. No one ever was going to wear her LCD coats!!! While studying at the RCA Clare worked on the very first RCA CDRom for the end of year show and helped push forward the concept of digital design and its marketing potential within the fashion department and beyond. This left Clare with both a huge passion for collecting shoes, wearing odd outfits, dodgy CDRoms and also a desire to help people achieve their ambitions. It also allowed her to truly develop her cross platform approach to the design process and solution building. She also fell in love with “the web”. Over the next 15 years a series of interesting positions in the UK and the US in fashion, interactive and entrepreneurial businesses landed Clare finally as Creative Director of the Interactive Media Design Agency in Bskyb.

Responsible for the creative direction of interactive properties, Clare helps build visual strategies and creative solutions with her award winning team to develop online, mobile, interactive tv, blue sky thinking and brand solutions for Bskyb. This is a highly directional and strategic position, that is forging a new creative force within Bskyb and the European entertainment market. Utilising earlier experience with early online video and projects for the likes of Microsoft, Office Shoes, IT Network, Open TV and the likes Clare and her team are truly pioneering online entertainment design. The future is looking incredibly interesting for Sky and a future that marries Clare’s cross media approach, mixed with a bit of pizzazz will have great results.

Paul Walsh (me)

You can read my biog here if you’re really bored.

Matthew Gorzkowski

Managing Director, Play

Matthew Bagwell is Conchango’s Creative Director and founder of creative agency, SignalOrange. Matthew has been called digital evangelist, offering insight into how people want to interact with organisations through multiple channels. He is capable of bridging the gap between inventing experiences made possible by web 2.0 phenomena and delivering them in reality.

Matthew Bagwell

Creative Director, Conchango

Matt began his Marketing career working for Saatchi & Saatchi in Europe and Shafter Advertising in the US where he helped to launch new products for major brands including Procter & Gamble, PepsiCo, Fujitsu and Nokia.

Recognising the potential of digital media, Matt joined Itraffic in San Francisco as Account Director. Here Matt led key accounts such as Disney and Buena Vista Entertainment before returning the Europe to join Itraffic London as Client Services Director where he oversaw the interactive marketing activity of brands such as British Airways and Hilton. In 2005, Matt co-founded Pay in conjunction with M&C Saatchi and former Itraffic colleagues Jon Sharpe and Ethan Segal.

Dr. Scott Gallacher

Director of Online & Partner Marketing, BskyB

Scott is responsible for Sky’s online sales & marketing across their full product portfolio including digital TV, Broadband, Telephony, HD, Mobile TV & Sky +. Sky, according to Nielsen, are the largest online spender in the UK underlining a commitment to digital, with their pioneering work in Behavioural Targeting winning the 2007 award for best use of research in media.

Scott is well regarded industry commentator & speaker, Chairing last year’s Revolution conference on Brand Advocacy and speaking at the Economist Marketing Director summit in March on the challenges facing marketing in the next 5 years as well as addressing Cranfield business school on the maturing of digital marketing.

Previous to BSkyB, Scott worked at OgilvyOne as Client Services Director for the American Express International Online account covering 38 countries. Prior to this he served as a Vice President for Digitas. Scott holds a PhD in Multimedia innovation & social learning from Edinburgh, M.Sc. in Human Computer Interaction from Heriot Watt and a BCom in Business Studies from Edinburgh.

Chris Clarke

Executive Creative Director and President, Digitas London

Chris has been at the forefront of the digital industry since the late 90s. In 2000 as a UK founder of pioneering digital agency Abel & Baker, Chris brought a new level of creative excellence to the nascent digital industry and won a number of awards including Campaign Direct, Revolution, Clio and Cannes Cyberlions for clients such as Virgin Mobile, The AA and MTV.

In 2002 Abel & Baker was bought by leading web agency Wheel. While at Wheel, first as Creative Director of Abel & Baker then Executive Creative Director of Wheel, Chris helped turn the creative reputation of the agency around, delivering award winning work and driving an extensive change management process to make Wheel an ideas led creative business. Key client achievements at Wheel include winning BT, the global roll out of Brahma beer, and bringing prestigious clients such as ABSOLUT Vodka and Sony PlayStation Europe on board. Chris also oversaw numerous corporate website projects for clients such as Allied Domecq, United Biscuits and Unilever for whom Wheel managed the global rollout of Unilever.com in 26 languages.

Since joining Digitas London in April 2006, Chris has re-invigorated the creative product, winning new business with Vauxhall, Shell and HP, rolling out a network of offices in Europe and winning a Campaign Digital Award.

Chris is a multi-award winning creative with Cyberlions, LIAA, Clio, Revolution, Campaign Direct, Campaign Digital and D&AD awards to his name. As a founder in the UK of digital pioneers Abel & Baker, Chris was responsible for some of the first Rich Media and viral work done in this market.

Daniel Birch

Creative Director, Freestyle Interactive

As a Creative Director who has worked at a number of top London agencies LBi (then Oyster), AKQA and twentysix Daniel now leads the creative and delivery teams at the midlands largest digital agency Freestyle Interactive. This gives him genuine perspective across all aspects of digital channels.

As a Creative Director of Freestyle it is his role to lead and define the user experience on their clients. With wide ranging experience in leading multidiscipline teams of designers, developers, writers and architects he is able to bring the right solutions to a wide range of online of projects.

As the board level role responsible for project delivery through the project management team Daniel has a clear understanding of the delivery challenges faced by project managers and can appreciate what it takes to deliver an awarding winning creative solution.

Daniel’s belief in balancing the desire to win awards with developing the right user experience for client’s customer puts him in a unique position. As a Creative Director Daniel has found the opportunity to have an opinion on all this creative but will be frequently found client side asking awkward questions or bothering project manager’s to try and understand how Isle Interactive can be more efficient – all with the goal of giving the creative a better chance to design better and with more insight.

A genuine understanding of all aspects of the digital build process and experience across kiosk, mobile web and iTV means Daniel is able to combine a wealth of experience to developing a framework for creative teams to work in. A desire to work on projects that are created in a less that ideal situation, short time frames, limiting timeframes or conservative outlook means he has an affinity for recognising others who have succeed in this conditions.

The client list is long and varied, as you’d expect from nearly 12 years of working in the industry. From mobile guidelines for Orange to ground up redesigns for Natwest and Abbey and campaign work for Volvo and Drambuie the experience is there.

Janice Cable

Principal Administrator, BIMA

When she joined BIMA, Janice brought with her the experience of a lifetime working with trade associations, mainly in the music industry where she considered herself extremely privileged to be able to work with some of the most influential industry doyens and talented composers, artists and broadcasters in the UK. She has considerable experience in arranging and coordinating exhibitions, seminars and conferences, both in the UK and abroad, and was responsible for organising industry social events, both lunches and black tie. Her previous involvement has been extremely valuable for the administration of the BIMA Awards as, amongst many other tasks, she prepared and managed the selection of the UK entry for the Eurovision Song Contest. She hasn’t done this for ten years which, incidentally, was the last time the UK won!

About BIMA

Established in 1985, the British Interactive Media Association (BIMA) is the industry’s longest established association to represent the diverse interests of the UK interactive industry.

In short, it’s BIMA’s mission to ensure the UK remains the centre of excellence worldwide for creativity within the interactive industry.

According to Marie Boran

John Collins said: a lot of speculation at the moment about an irish iphone release. i have the story but am sworn to secrecy.

It is O2 in my opinion. I’ve been meaning to write a post about the iPhone to explain why you shouldn’t bother unlocking it for a network operator that doesn’t support EDGE. The iPhone is absolutely fantastic for lots of reasons that I’ll go into later in another post. The browser is

Don’t bother with the iPhone if it means browsing on a network that doesn’t support EDGE. It’s not just dreadfully slow, it doesn’t actually work most of the time.

So, with that in mind, O2 Ireland is the only choice for Apple. O2 Ireland (as far as I know) is the only operator in Ireland to support EDGE.

I noticed Damien Mulley blogged about this just before I put finger to keyboard and his argument is more compelling.

According to InfoWorld, Facebook took a new step into the mobile realm on Thursday, launching a platform for operators designed to make its social networking application work better on mobile devices.

Vodafone is the first operator to use the Facebook for Mobile Operators platform and has started services in the UK and Germany, said Jed Stremel, Facebook’s director of mobile division. Vodafone will soon expand the program to Greece, Italy, Spain, Ireland, and Portugal.

The platform involves giving operators a set of technical specifications intended to resolve some frustrating hang-ups when using Facebook on a mobile phone rather than a PC, such as smoothing out login problems and opening up other features, Stremel said.

The move by Facebook, which ranks next to MySpace as one of the most popular social networking sites, is intended to grow its user base, which the company estimates at 64 million users. So far, the company says it has 6 million users of Facebook Mobile, an unsupported mobile version of the Web site that will now get full support, Stremel said.

At the moment, the mobile site does not have any advertising. Stremel would not reveal the financial details of Facebook’s deal with Vodafone, although he said operators will be able to generate revenue from data services as their subscribers access Facebook.

It sounds like Vodafone are likely to build a Facebook application, not provide mobile Web version of Facebook.

The company is hoping to lure more operators by the simplicity with which they can enable Facebook, Stremel said.

Facebook has created special Web pages with instructions on how operators can set up their systems, he said. The instructions, for example, let operators add system settings that will let their subscribers send MMS with photos or video to their Facebook profiles, Stremel said.

The platform also includes other specifications designed to stop abuse of Facebook, such as spamming, Stremel said. When someone sends their first MMS with a photo to their profile, the user is sent back a confirmation message with a code or a link. That confirmation then links that person’s phone with their Facebook account, Stremel said.

My thoughts

I’m confused. Why would Operators do anything to enable a better user experience for Facebook? They don’t do it for any other content provider, at least not without taking a large percentage of the revenue. This won’t be possible with Facebook unless they charge for access. It’s not as if they’re going to make anything from picture messaging as they suggest.

Does this mean that Vodafone is going to charge users to access a mobile version of Facebook? Why doesn’t Facebook simply build a mobile friendly Web site that works, like every other company that cares to make their site more mobile friendly.

As I’ve said, I’m confused, so please let me know if you have better insight, or a theory to support the relationship.

Source InfoWorld

My new Head of Communications has advised (eh, no, he has told me) to create a new blog under my name and move my non-Segala related posts with me. I must admit, this is something I’ve been pondering for ages as the Segala blog has attracted a great audience, but one that is perhaps, a little diverse for it to gain real benefit.

I think Dennis Howlett will agree that this has been a good move as I’ve asked him for advice on this matter in the past. I should have plenty of real estate to include my buddy’s gapingvoid widget too.

By splitting my posts between the Segala blog and here (oh, and BIMA), I hope to make my writing a little more relevant for you. Mind you, my writing skills aren’t likely to improve, I’ll continue to use poor grammar and spell things as if I’m looking in a mirror. I’m likely to cross-post where I feel my thoughts where relevant also.

I’ll continue to post on the Segala blog about the Semantic Web, Accessibility, Mobile Web, Standards, W3C, Content Labels, Trust, Search and anything else that’s relevant to Segala. This should make what we’re launching in 2008 much more prominent.

On this blog, I intend to cover everything else that I used to cover on Segala’s blog, such as Social Media, Web 2.0, Web and Mobile Trends, Twitter, Facebook, Networking, Events, Connecting People and anything else that I have an opinion on. I might even write about some personal stuff.

Kamrul, our Wordpress and PHP guru, is currently working on an Semantic Web application for Aido, but I’m hoping to squeeze a couple of hours out of him today to get some minimum functionality added to this blog, not to mention a little branding.

I don’t expect many comments left on this post because my mother doesn’t even know about it yet. However, if for some reason you stumble across this post before it falls off the edge of the blog with the introduction of new posts, please provide some feedback on what functionality you’d like to see?

Would you like to see any of the following on the sidebar

1. Most recent comments and who made them?
2. A summary of posts with the highest number of comments?
3. Digg?
4. Photographs of the people who left comments?
5. Recent Readers (MyBlogLog)?
6. Tag cloud or Recent Posts?
7. My last Twitter message?
8. My followers twitter messages?

Please ignore any design or layout changes (breakages) as Kamrul and I make changes on the fly to get this blog off the ground. We’ll transfer all my social media and entrepreneurial type posts from Segala to here, along with the comments next week. That should be fun.

I look forward to building a wee community here and hope you can be part of it

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