Changify Raval

I am very pleased to have been part of this project with Priya Prakash and Changify. It was fun to spend a morning exploring La Boqueria in Barcelona as part of the Heroes of the Mobile Fringe Festival 2014 It was interesting meeting some of the market traders and the management of the market and understanding some of the issues both residents and traders face. It’s no surprise that there is no simple solution, but there are ways of adapting digital technologies to meld with the traditions and culture of the market. This is just the first step on the journey.

Plus ça change…

I’m lucky to be born with a curious mind and to have plenty of opportunity to exercise that curiosity as part and parcel of the consultancy work I do. And because of that curiosity, I tend to notice more of the new stuff and because of my experience over 25 years in sectors ranging from retail, the arts, construction, public transport, media, advertising and mobile, I can put some of this into context for my clients when it comes to working with them on their mobile strategies and planning.

Last week, I was thinking about insurance and financial services and mobile. This week, I’m back at one of my regular stomping grounds of news media and mobile.

Both sectors are rooted in their ways of doing things. Neither has adapted that well to the digital world. Both sectors are aware that change is happening, but neither seem to be aware as to how fast that actually is (hint – it’s faster than any of us can imagine). Neither sector are clued up about technology beyond what they already know and use – in insurance and backing there are legacy systems from the early days of computing and in newspapers, it’s about print production and the technologies around that. And neither sector consider technology to be core of what they do. Maybe they’re right, but my hunch is that that may be holding them back as they’re not able to attract the right people to their organisations.

Interestingly, both sectors now seem to be embracing some developer culture in organising hackathons, opening up APIs for those hackathons and wanting to engage more with the start-up and tech community. It’s tricky though. When you’re not used to sharing, when you’re not used to open dialogue with external parties and telling them what’s actually going on rather than what you want them to know, it’s difficult to start doing that now. And there are so many hackathons going on in London right now, it may well be too late to join that bandwagon and a new format or approach may be required. Nevertheless, I’m pleased to be seeing collaboration activities happening.

I’ll be honest. I was disappointed last week at the FinTech event I attended last week. Nothing wrong with the event per se, but I didn’t see anything new or exciting or noteworthy. The discussions were sensible in many respects and the Aviva CIO was very interesting to listen to. But there was no leadership or real vision for what the future holds in how our daily lives are changing, especially in relation to the internet of things, big data, privacy and therefore what that might mean for the future of insurance or banking for those people.

The global media industry fares a little better although there are glimpses of hope from the UK. Yesterday, I heard some very interesting case studies from Hearst and how it’s tackling new digital properties and how The Times is moving from having readers to having members. And today, the FT.com’s story, as ever, is a strong one when it comes to digital leadership and actually trying new things (car interfaces, smart TV apps) and having its eye on what’s coming next. The majority of media owners I talk to outside the UK are still very wary of making these leaps of faith as they’re not sure what the next thing might be. Most media owners think their competition is other media owners. I imagine it’s not – look at the rise of The Young Turks, Bleacher Report and Jamal Edwards’ SB:TV empire. Bedroom media moguls all of them. No-one saw them coming (except maybe Google, Twitter and Facebook).

Well, I’d love to be able to tell you what that is. I don’t know what it is. I think it would be fair to say that no-one really does. Not even FT.com, The Times, Hearst et al. None of us are fortune-tellers. All those companies are openly experimenting, investing in systems, people and processes that are adaptable to change. Another thing they all have in common is really understanding their customers – bringing the experience back to humans – what we want, how we use our devices, when we use them, the content we want to read, the content we enjoy and share the most – that data driven insight then drives the thinking behind new products, services and revenue streams.

Ultimately, what needs to happen is culture change. Getting the right technology system or platform in won’t save your business. Rethinking your business in relation to the digital age just might. Will we still need car insurance with driverless cars? And what does the future of news look like? It certainly doesn’t look like a printed newspaper.

I’m going to leave you with some quotes that have kept popping up on my radar in the last few days:

Jack Welch — 'If the rate of change on the outside exceeds the rate of change on the inside, the end is near.'

John Kotter – ‘The rate of change is not going to slow down anytime soon’

and finally

Karen Lamb – ‘A year from now, you may wish you’d started today’

I don’t need to give you more stats on how mobile is eating the world or the exponential growth of mobile media and advertising. You can use a familiar search engine to find that out. Hey they even have a whole section dedicated to telling about that with Our Mobile Planet. What I would urge you to do is to do *something*.It may not be the right thing and it won’t be the last thing you do either. Don’t be afraid to experiment, to fail, to learn and to start again. Don’t be left behind though. Create a future you, your family, your friends and your customers will want to be part of.

The speed of change

I’ve been in this mobile world now for 13 years almost and I’ve seen many changes in the industry. Everyone talks about how fast it’s moving, how everything changes so quickly and the technology moves on apace. Others complain that they simply can’t keep up. Others simply don’t want to keep up – this new stuff is just too much for them and they’re hanging on to the old ways of doing things.

I do get asked pretty frequently what changes I’ve noticed over the years and I’m not sure that the changes are as profound as sometimes we think they are. I’m still having the same conversations with potential clients about the power of mobile marketing that I had 10 years ago with very similar objections that I encountered when I first started working on ZagMe back in 2000.

I’ve also just spent the last few weeks in my hometown of Worcester (that’s the one in England for my US readers). My neighbour’s wi-fi aside keeping me sane, this appears to be the land that the internet forgot. Everything pretty much happens the same way that it happened when I was living here 25 years ago. I don’t see people glued to their mobile screens in the same way I do in London. Wi-fi is available, but not readily. Although lots of businesses promote themselves on Facebook, it’s done half-heartedly and they don’t have many followers – but when you walk past the businesses, they’re busy. Local restaurant websites don’t have their opening hours listed, have menus on their sites from three years ago and don’t seem to see the need or benefit from keeping this stuff updated.

People also still read newspapers here – the printed kind. Ones that you might pay for as well as the freebies (which just seem to be property listings). And there appears to be a thriving market for glossy, local magazines too which I was surprised to see. I’ve picked up at least three in the last week in local cafes and another one arrived through the door this morning.

There is also barely any networking here. Well, not what I would recognise as networking at least. I think it’s related to the local populace being connected in real life rather than virtual life perhaps and it’s probably also linked to the fact that mobile signal is absolutely appalling in the city (no really, my signal routinely drops out here *for hours* at a time.) The networking you’ll see here are the generalist networking breakfasts and meet-ups that are organised by the likes of the local Chamber of Commerce but not a lot else. I could be wrong here and all this stuff is organised outside of Google’s ability to index it in a way I can find it and connect with it to meet new people and interact with the local community, since I will be spending more time in Worcester in the coming months.

So it got me thinking about the speed of change, and the difference between what was then and what is now and the differences between locations in, even a small country, like the UK? The future most definitely is not evenly distributed.

Whilst I was pondering this, I discovered that Cybersalon has been resurrected. This was one of the very early meet-ups looking at our digital world. They’ve been on hiatus for some years now, but they’re back with a series of really interesting events. The web world has been pretty notorious for not embracing mobile early and rubbishing the idea that the web viewed on mobile will be bigger than the web viewed on desktop or laptops. But that has indeed happened. So I was curious to find that Cybersalon had published a Mobile Manifesto back in 2000. It makes for a very interesting read. And going back to my first point about what has changed, it appears to me that what they were talking about 13 years ago is still very relevant to our mobile world today. Have a read and let me know what you think.