Heading back to London for MEM 2009

I’m heading back to London this weekend — there’s a ton to do back in the Centre of Her Majesty’s Empire.

Most notably (and, er, the stuff I can discuss publicly, anyway), I’m attending both the Mboile Entertainment Forum Market event and their corresponding award ceremony. I was a judge on two of the panels and I’m looking forward to seeing which innovative companies have triumphed.

Nokia very kindly invited me to their table for the award ceremony. I shall bring you the gossip from the event as soon as I can.

What’s the Mobile Entertainment Market then? Well, here’s the overview text:

With just a few days remaining before MeM 2009 returns to London, anticipation is building. As the official annual event of MEF, MeM is the definitive gathering for mobile media community. Featuring over 80 C-Level thought leaders representing the crème-de-la crème of the multi-billion dollar mobile entertainment business, MeM 2009 is the only event that will equip you with all the information and access to decision-makers needed for focusing your business and growing revenues during these unprecedented times.

There’s some shit-hot interactive panel discussions taking place thus:

* Critical Success Factors and Trends in the Current Global Economic Climate
* Will Smartphones Take Over the Mobile Entertainment Industry?
* Special Focus on Mobile Application Stores and Widgets: Creating a New Industry
* Towards Multi-Platform Media: Mobile as the Key Enabler
* Special Focus on Mobile Application Stores and Widgets: How to get Your Apps into the Hands of the Consumer
* Smartpipe Enablers: Defining the Era of Change
* Mobile Social Networking: Can it be Monetised?
* Leveraging Opportunities in Growth Markets
* Music Has No Future in Mobile: Discuss

I’m moderating a panel. Here are the details:

11.10am
Special Focus on Mobile Application Stores (MAS) and Widgets: Creating a New Industry

– How has the mobile applications store changed the mobile content ecosystem?
– How do you ensure profitability when combining all the parts in this new ecosystem?
– Successfully integrating mobile internet into the apps experience

Moderator:
Ewan MacLeod, Founder, Mobile Industry Review

Panellists:

Anatolie Papas, Community Matchmaker, Symbian Foundation
James Parton, Head of O2 Litmus, O2 UK
Rory O’Neill, Director, Solutions and Alliances Marketing, EMEA, RIM
Faraz Syed, Chief Executive Officer, DeviceAnywhere

You can count on fireworks.

I can’t stand panel debates where executives sit wittling on about one or two talking points. On this panel we’ll have some good discussion. Those are some brilliantly knowledgeable participants and I reckon there will be some substantial opportunity to get a bit of banter going.

Here’s where I am:

– Symbian: Complete bollocks with an ever diminishing possibility of success. I firmly believe that every time the charasmatic and clearly exceedingly intelligent David Wood of Symbian brings out his EPOC Psion 5, a little Mobile Application Developer angel dies.
– o2: Semi Bollocks with occasional sunshine. The jury’s out and I’m not hearing any good news at all from them as yet.
– RIM: Abysmal application store that must have been designed by 3 blind kittens in a bag. Again, I haven’t had one single developer — ever — proclaim how delighted they were to be on the Blackberry MAS and how much cash they’d made as a result.
– DeviceAnywhere: Critical if you need to develop applications on an array of handsets.

I will, of course, qualify those statements on the day and my job is simply to moderate, stimulate and get out of the way.

Although I’m a pretty confident chap, I have a secret to tell you. I often get nervous when it comes to panel discussions. This is after a harrowing experience at an SDForum event in Silicon Valley a few years ago. I had about 13-14 wicked questions for some application developers. Questions. Points of discussion, that sort of thing. I got up on stage with a wilting panel of weirdos — did a quick introduction and … launched into my first question/prompt. To which each member of the panel said ‘no’ or ‘I haven’t got an opinion on that subject’. And repeat. For 25 minutes. Me and the audience spent that time thinking ‘what a load of cocks’ of the panelists. I ended up laughing out loud and began making up positions to which each panelist simply answered ‘yes’ or ‘no’. Like a robotic arse. Thus I have a secret fear of moderating panels lest such an experience happen again.

Luckily each of the participants on my MEM panel will be able to not only handle my (often) unique and direct perspective but they’ll also be able to hold their own in any discussions. Bring it on.

If you’ve got any particular questions you’d like me to fire at the panel (even if you’re not coming to the event), let me know. I’ll make a note of their answers and post them here.

Everything you’d like to know about MEM is here. If you’re going (and let’s face it… if you’re not, and you work in the field of Mobile Entertainment, what is wrong with you?) then look me up and come and say hi.