My Mobile Day: Dave Evans, CTO of SurfKitchen

I’m delighted to be able to publish the first of our My Mobile Day features. Building on the excellent reception from the posts by James Whatley and Ben Smith, I contacted a number of industry executives to ask them to outline their mobile usage across an average day.

First up is Dave Evans, CTO of SurfKitchen, the market-leading on-device portal provider. (That’s him above). SurfKitchen just launched SurfKit Phonetop, which delivers an integrated single platform of compelling mobile services — think widgetised mobile desktop. I’m going to see if I can take a look Phonetop in more detail shortly.

A bit of background on Dave: He originally joined SurfKitchen as Senior VP Product Marketing, responsible for evolving the current SurfKitchen products to dominate the emerging DUE software segment.

Prior to SurfKitchen, Dave was VP of Product Platform and Architecture at o2 — and, interestingly, the chap responsible for the development of the O2 Active programme and delivery of O2’s core data services platforms such as Games, WAP, Variable Charging, Music and emerging Service Delivery Architecture. I reckon Dave is one of the people to thank for me getting an XDA all those years ago then. Dave was also part of the core data products group driving O2’s strategic objectives of leading in Data.

Before o2, Dave was CTO of BTLooksmart delivering comprehensive search/directory solutions and associated advertising solutions to major internet portals such as Altavista, MSN and so on — and prior to this Dave held senior IT positions in Encyclopaedia Britannica and Argos.

So, what handsets does he sport? Well, he’s a fan of the Sony Ericsson K800i and he has the obligatory Blackberry for mobile email. On his K800i he points out that he runs SurfKitchen’s Phonetop suite of products — Phonetop, amongst other things, let’s you access a wide range of widgets and device services easily. I really need to get a look at it.

Ok, on with the commentary. Dave’s average mobile day:

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7:00am
Wake up, and have breakfast with family. Check through my K800i weather and news widget to see what is happening in the world, and my blackberry for emails that have arrived during the night – we have teams around the world – a true 7×24 operation.

8:00am
Drive into work – using a Bluetooth headset on the K800i I join our daily conference call with our offshore developers in India to track progress.

8:30am
Arrive into the office and put both K800i and Blackberry on charge

10:00am
Check train times into London for a meeting this afternoon, using the SurfKitchen Widget which gives me the departure times of trains for next 2 hours.

12:00am
Arrive at Reading Station and catch 12:00 fast train to Paddington

1:00pm
Check emails on Blackberry whilst on train, then head to Baker street on tube. On arrival I check Google maps to find the right street for the office.

1:30pm
Arrive in reception, and whilst waiting for customer, check emails, and updates to the news widget on my K800i home screen

2:00pm
Customer meeting – blackberry and K800i on silent

4:00pm
Leave customer meeting and walk to tube. Quick check on rail time widget- next train out at 4:45 arriving in Reading at 5:15, call my wife to let her know I will be able to pick my son up from school.

5:00pm
On the train catching up on email that arrived during the afternoon, quick call to CEO to update on progress with customer.

6:00pm
Pick up son from school – phones rings with call from work – son complains about the ringtone. I pass him the phone and he selects the downloads client and loads up one of the new ringtones.

8:00pm
Take son to football training – I wait for him, and monitor the premier league scores on my football widget, and browse through latest YouTube clips to pass the time.

9:00pm
Son finishes training – I give him the good news that Manchester United won again.

– – –

Heh, excellent — thanks for taking the time Dave!

If you’re a mobile industry executive and you’d like to feature in a My Mobile Day, drop me a note and we’ll sort it out. (PR enquiries welcome too)