I am Helen Keegan, a veteran of mobile marketing, advertising and media since 2000. This is my diary and musings about mobile since 2004. I am part consultant and part events organiser in London, Barcelona and beyond (Swedish Beers and Heroes of Mobile). I write here about mobile technology and media and other things I'm interested in like theatre, art, crafts, business and life.
I recently held a series of five events with my friend and collaborator, Lloyd Davis, at Truphone's rather splendid offices in Canary Wharf. I did a round-up of all the events over on my Heroes of Mobile website so please follow the links below to see the videos of the talks and to find out more about what we covered and links to further coverage and reading.
Lloyd and I are working up some new event themes for the New Year. If you're interested in hosting and sponsoring the next series in the UK in the Spring (it doesn't have to be London), please get in touch.
I used to have a Barbie doll when I was a little girl. I also had a Sindy doll and a Tressy doll (I’m showing my age now!) and I used to really enjoy dressing them and playing with them as any little girl would. I used to make them a lego kitchen to play in and I made them clothes to wear and a dolls house out of a cardboard box. I expect I used to talk to them a lot too.
Several decades pass and it’s time for a new kind of Barbie from Mattel. She's called Hello Barbie and is already sold out on the Mattel website. She’s interactive and can converse with children. She uses machine learning to improve on those conversations over time. As you can see from the clip, she does a pretty good job of those conversations too. She’s the first iteration of a robot Barbie, if you like.
For her conversation capability to work, it uses wi-fi and cloud storage and proprietary technology from ToyTalk. It records and listens to the child’s words. Sends that data to its main server, works out a reply and sends the right pieces of conversation back to the doll – all in real time. On one level, this could be very useful indeed to improve a child’s communication and speech skills. But there’s more than a little downside with the service.
Let's leave to one side for now the bit about encouraging children to have a deep relationship with an object.... (Ever seen Ex Machina or Her? If not, you should. Both great movies exploring our relationship with robots.) One of the main concerns for me is the smartphone app that accompanies the doll. As the parent (or buyer), you can set up the accompanying app to listen in to your child’s conversations with Barbie and even share them with other people. This facilitates helicopter parenting at its worst. Just no. Seriously. Don't even think about it. Let children be children. And give them some space to play, to imagine and to be. You really do not need to monitor every word they say or stalk them while they're playing.
This article on The Conversation goes into more detail about the issues around the service, the potential for hacking, the potential for collection of data and misuse of such data, and more.
This is a personal favourite and highly recommend Ofcom’s various communications reports. For those outside of the UK, Ofcom, aka The Office of Communications, is a UK government department and produces a range of reports looking at communications usage across the UK. It’s a brilliant, neutral resource, and what’s more, it’s completely free. Find out more about the data sets and report.
Some highlights from this year’s International Report:
“The communications sector’s total global revenues in 2014 were £1,190bn, growing by 1.5% year on year (incorporating the telecoms, television, postal and radio sectors). Global television industries had the largest increase in revenue in 2014, up by £12bn (5%), to £244bn. Telecommunications revenue, although the largest by a considerable margin, registered slow growth of 0.5% to reach £846bn.
UK communications sector revenues were the fifth highest of our comparator countries and the second highest in Europe. In 2014, as in recent years, the three largest communications markets by revenue were in the US (£316bn), China (£135bn) and Japan (£110bn). Outside the top three, the total UK revenue of £48bn was second only to Germany (£55bn).
4G mobile population coverage (from at least one operator) increased in most comparator countries in 2014, with China having the largest year-on-year increase, rising from 1% to 73%. The UK had 84% 4G mobile population coverage at year-end 2014, an increase of 21 percentage points.
The UK had the highest proportion of total mobile connections that were 4G, of the EU5 countries in 2014, at 28%. Among all our comparator countries, South Korea had the highest proportion of mobile connections that were 4G, at 63% of connections, followed by the US (40%), and Australia and Singapore (both 39%).
Around two-thirds (67%) of UK respondents use a smartphone. This is in line with France, Germany and Australia. Spain and Italy had the highest smartphone take-up, at 83% and 79% of respondents respectively, and the US reported the lowest take-up of our comparator countries, at 57%.
Spain (45%) and the UK (42%) have the highest levels of ownership of connected TVs (either smart TV sets, or sets connected to the internet via another device, such as a set-top box, video games console, or other internet-enabled device).
Nearly two-thirds (66%) of people in the UK had used an online service to watch TV or films within the past week (increasing to 81% in the past month); the highest proportion across all of the countries surveyed.
Around four in ten (44%) UK respondents had used a catch-up service from a free-to-air broadcaster within the past week, the greatest proportion of any country surveyed.”
I highly recommend you download the report and add it to your holiday reading list and gen up for the New Year.
Today, I'm wearing a #TieForHelena. My friend Patrick wrote about Helena last week. She lives in Tooting, which is close to where I live and somewhere I pass through several times a week. She was attacked just yards from her home at 5pm in the afternoon on 9th December. it wouldn't even have been fully dark at that time and the street would have been lit. She believes her attacker singled her out because she was 'rocking a tie'.
From the Evening Standard article:“Helena Martins, 43, who lost her hearing five years ago to Ménière's disease, was cornered by the man as she walked home through Tooting last night.
Moments before, she had removed her cochlea implant, which she relies on to hear, as she approached her house.
The man hit her in the eye and choked her with her polka dot tie, which she believes marked her out as gay, and her implant dropped on the floor.”
Being attacked for who you are or what you’re wearing has no place in London or anywhere else for that matter. And for that reason, I’m joining the campaign and wearing a #TieForHelena.
Those of you who know me are aware that I take a keen interest in new apps, services and technologies. As part of that, I've been running demo sessions for 10 years or so - first at Mobile Monday London, and for the last 5 years, under my Heroes of Mobile banner in London and Barcelona. And they're always popular events.
These are not pitch events - they're much more relaxed. Think show 'n tell style with a bit of Q and A thrown in for good measure.
And I have one of these sessions coming up next week in Leeds - Innovation on the Fringe Goes North! - and I'd love to see you participate, especially if you're based North of Watford. Living in London, the local start-up scene is awash with new apps and services. But where are their Northern equivalents? I have a few up my sleeve, but I'd love to see many more. And I'm sure they're out there. I'm a Northerner by birth, I have friends up and down the British Isles and I know there's talent across the UK and not just centred in East London.
Are you doing something interesting in mobile apps, services, hardware or internet of things? It can be at concept, prototype or fully-fledged stage. Are you available in Leeds on Tuesday afternoon (3 Nov) for a couple of hours to share with us what you're doing and hang out with other entrepreneurs and fellow mobilists? If so, get in touch as soon as you can so that I can slot you into the schedule. Drop me an email or fill in this quick form to tell me a little bit about what you're doing and we'll take it from there.
And if you just fancy leaning back and seeing what's hot and what's not mobile-wise in Leeds, then please RSVP now.
And if you're not a Northerner, but you'd still like to take part with a demo, you're very welcome to!
I can't believe it's November already and it's just nine weeks to Christmas. Where does the year go? But as the evenings start to draw in, it's time to gather round campfires and tell ourselves stories about the battles we've won and lost, the monsters that lurk in the dark and the bright future that is waiting for us on the other side of winter.
Ok, so maybe we don't have an actual campfire this time but we do have a beautiful converted Methodist Chapel in Leeds to hang out in. So this means that November is chock full of brain food from the team who brought you theHacklandsfestival in August (you missed a cracker if you weren't there) – I'll be working again with Lloyd Davis of Tuttle Club fame, the fab aql team in Leeds and and James Tagg ofTruphone.
On Tuesday and Wednesday next week, we're all up in Leeds for theHeroes of the Mobile Fringe Goes Northseries – two days of talks and conversations about the future of work and mobile tech with contributions from Lesley Cowley, Bernard Ginns and Patrick Smith and includes the legendarySwedish Beersfor the first time in the North of England. I'm also co-hosting a fabulous ladies lunch at Harvey Nicks. Fellow ladies in mobile and tech, you don't want to miss this!
Come to as many of the sessions as you like, they're all free to attend and our friends at aql will make you very welcome indeed. There's plenty of space to hang out and co-work between sessions too.
And if you fancy making the trip from down South to Leeds, then may I recommend using http://hotwire.com for your hotel. I got a great deal there when I booked last week. Expedia also had a comprehensive list that included B&Bs and not just the big hotels.
