Tag: MGoL

Catching up through the fog of jetlag

Greetings one and all! I’ve just got back from the States and I am shattered.

UK –> Dallas –> Las Vegas –> San Francisco –> UK

…and breathe…

Had to fly to Las Vegas for a work thing see…
via Dallas.

Rather amusingly, it being the first ever flight from LHR (London Heathrow) to DFW (Dallas, Fort Worth) the Boeing we travelled in was given a welcome ‘hose down’ by the airport’s fire trucks…

I didn’t get a picture of that – but I found another example

Anywhoo – Vegas.
Woah…

Nice place to visit and wotnot but I’d never wanna live there. Jeez.

I stayed at The Palms Hotel/Resort/Casino… The one where we held Mobile Geeks of Las Vegas… aka Mobile Geeks of London ON TOUR. What a fantastic night THAT was. Huge props to Mr Jeb Brilliant of Brilliant Expos for making that happen… and for also swinging it so we could just walk straight into the club/bar in the next tower. Nice work.

So yeah – What else did I get up to?

  • Took part in the ‘Mobile Web Jam Session’ – That was cool. Good people in the room. Same old same old problems mind…
  • Hung out with some cool folk – Namely: Darla, Amir, Jeb, Carlo, Rafe and Ewan. Carlo is actually insane enough to live in Vegas. But you wouldn’t think of it to know him. 🙂
  • Joined a Blogger round table regarding the future of mobile; thought about a Facbook Phone – I’ve already written up my thoughts on that.
  • Broke my shoes. Twice. Fixed the first pair, replaced the second.
  • Saw ‘some’ parts of Vegas. Not loads. Well… I saw the outsides of some of the more elaborate hotels.
  • And that’s kind of it really…

This was me, on the last day of the show, having just sat down and relaxed for the first time in about five days…

Not soon after this pic was taken I flew to San Francisco…
There’s more to come soon, I just need to get some shuteye…

Night night.

Zzz…

Mobile Geeks of London: ON TOUR!

We’re bringing the MGoL to Las Vegas!

So – You may or may not know that a while back I set up a little facebook group called ‘The Mobile Geeks of London‘. Basically a place where I could meet people like me I guess…
Hehehe…

And well – it’s grown.. and grown.. and grown! …last count, 294 members!

We had our 3rd official meetup a little while back and it was great.
(I’ll do a larger post on MGoL in general sometime soon – yeah – should do that)

Anywhoo – I mentioned the other day that I as headed to Las Vegas with SpinVox for CTIA and within 24hrs I had an email from my friend Jeb Brilliant (no really – that is his name – and yes, he is Brilliant) telling me that he loved the MGoL idea and had been waiting for a chance to get one stateside…

And so….

HERE WE ARE!!
The stuff below has been taken from the facebook group. If you’re not on facebook then drop me an email at yahoo do co dot uk and Iet me know you’re coming… Looking forward to it already!

🙂
___________________________________________________________________________________

It’s CTIA next week and on the evening of Monday 31st March at The Playboy Club in Las Vegas the Mobile Geeks of London are having their first ever OFFICIAL ‘overseas’ meetup!

The Time: 8pm onwards
The Date: Monday March 31st
The Place:

The Playboy Bar
Palms Casino Resort
4321 West Flamingo Road
Las Vegas, NV 89103
52nd floor of the Fantasy Tower
http://www.palms.com/playboy_club_1.php

(note – it ain’t a strip club – I checked)

Also – it being the first ever overseas event – I have to break my self-imposed ‘no sponsor’ rule…

The upside of this being that

a) We get a fantastic venue thanks to Yougetitback.com

and

b) Your first drink is free thanks to SpinVox

So:

Mobile Geeks of Las Vegas brought to you in conjunction with SpinVox.
Sponsored by Yougetitback.com and organised by Brilliant Expos…

AND FINALLY!

I know most of the Mobile Geeks of London on this mailing list are, by definition, NOT based in Las Vegas.

But next week… some of you may be.

Either way – Hope to see you there!

(and if you know anyone else who might be in Vegas – let them know too)

http://www.spinvox.com
http://yougetitiack.com
http://www.brilliantexpos.com

Reminder: Mobile Geeks of London III

Wotcha!

Mobile Geeks of London III is less than a week away and I am ridiculously excited…
It really is looking like it’s going to be the best one yet… 🙂

If you’re reading this and unsure of what the hell I am talking about:

DUDE! WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?!

First – Get yourself off to the facebook group, sign up and then add the event to your diaries folks!

Just so you know – the event is happening THIS Thursday evening, Feb 27th, upstairs at the All Bar One on New Oxford Street (closest tube – Tottenham Court Road).

Stuff you may expect to see:

– Nokias from WOM World
– Mobile gaming from Playyoo
– VoIP from Truphone
– Super SIM Cards from MAXRoam
– Internet made Mobile from Mippin

^ Those are all – to date – confirmed attendees.
I’m pretty certain there’ll be a lot more on show – all you’ve got to do is ask the the right person/s…

Remember –
You’re not coming to buy, you’re not coming to sell it. You’re just coming to use and play.
…and strictly NO BIZ/DEV!
😉

So yeah – looking forward to seeing you all there and if you can’t make it – SHAME ON YOU!
Maybe I’ll see you at the next one…

J.
PS – I’m TRYING to get me an uber-exclusive SpinVox Mobster that I can give away as some kind of raffle prize.
If anyone else is reading this who has anything they’d like to contribute to this little ad-hoc prize draw then do get in touch and we’ll go from there.

Top Banana.

Hey – I’ve been busy!

To paraphrase an old friend during a power outage:

Window Reflections“I’m holding a phone! I work with phones. That counts as work”

Anywhoo – if that’s the case then that’s me over there

———————————>

Being busy.
:p

Ok ok ok – so I’ve been neglecting my blog a little bit of late. I’ve had some good reasons mind. Most of which will hopefully become clear by the time you finish reading.

Er… that is if you finish reading at the end of this post. Not if you finish reading NOW for instance.
That’d be rubbish.

So let’s crack on shall we?!

Right – the ‘to-blog’ list from my last-but-one post read a little something like this:

So let’s address each one shall we:

First up:
My business trip to San Francisco
I’m going to duck out at this point at say that it deserves a post all to itself. So I’m going to cheat a bit and defer that to another post. Not the best of starts.

Next:
Social Networks through SpinVox
Again – saving this for a separate post – it’s a bit of a SpinVox love in to be honest – and I can’t wait to share it!
(the news and coverage falls into this too)

What else:
Mobile Geeks of London III –
The plan was to get this out and done by the end of November – but what with it being two days until December you and I both know that that just is not going to happen. However, the ONE PERSON who I was waiting for DID get back to me – and we’re making plans to get it up and running early 2008. So watch this space.

Finally:
The couple of other blogging projects that I’ve been working on – this is the thing that’s been taking up my time – hence the VOX neglect – but hey – I’m back now huh?

First up – Remember how I told you that you could Blog through SpinVox?

Well – NOOOOOOW – Yours truly is now officially ‘Editor-in-Chief’ over at the new SpinVox Blog.
Wheeeeee! Which is just cool.
(remind me to change my email sig – hehe)

It’s only been going for a little while now and, although I’m still finding my feet a little bit, I’ve got some great support from the team around me and hopefully it’ll go from strength to strength. Got some great ideas for the next three months or so…. so do me a favour and add the SpinVox Blog Feed to your RSS reader today!
(and if you don’t like the content – at least you know who to complain to!) 😉

Ok – so now – onto my other blogging project – and this kind of ties into my last post too – in that you’ve probably been waiting for ‘part 2’ of the review. Well – sorry to break it to you – but part 2 isn’t coming…

What happened was my mate Ewan Macleod, Editor over at SMS Text News, saw my “Future of Mobile – Part 1” post (which I did, live, from my N95 – thank you VOX – haven’t done that for a while), and dropped me a sneaky text asking if he could have a full write-up.

“Sure thing” I said. So he wrote a leading piece and then I followed it up with the full write up.
🙂

All of which seemed to go down pretty well. Ewan’s a top guy and I’ve done some things with him in the past so it was nice to actually sit down and properly contribute to his, quite frankly, fantastic site.

Anywhoo – this lead onto another conversation which in turn resulted with the following question –

“How about doing it regularly? Not reporting per se, but more of a weekly opinion piece… ”

So with SpinVox’ blessing (thanks guys!) “Whatley Wednesday” was born.

Subjects covered so far: Flashmobbing and the Nokia N81 8GB.
Again – quite a new project – but regular Whatleydude content, week in week out?! You can’t complain!
😉

So where does that leave my personal blog?
My SpinVox-y chatter has found a home and now it seems my Mobile chatter has found a home too.

Well as I’ve already said – I’ve still got stuff I want to write up – but if you remember – I originally started this site so I could blog the Glastonbury Festival LIVE from my mobile.
And even though that had geeky overtones – it was still more of a personal thing.

So… I’m gonna try and take this blog back to its roots!

After all – the address is on my Moo Card so I best make sure the content is up to date!

Until next time….

It’s been a long time coming…

This is me, (in case you weren’t aware) trying to get to grips with, (read: NOT DROP), my N95 while hanging out the back of a yellow cab crusing the streets of San Francisco.

But the look on my face pretty much typifies the look that’s been on my face since the last time I blogged.

I have been at it non-stop.
Hence the lack of blog-love lately I guess…

So this is a quick refresher/breather – I keep looking at this post and realising that there is still quite a lot I need to cover off…

But I’m not going to do it here…Sorry. Still too much to do.

EDIT: Err… Reading this back through – looks like I have! Ha!

So first – a ‘to-do/blog’ list of things I need to get done…

Without a doubt I need to give up some more love to the guys at Mippin.

My dear friends over in Fulham have just released the latest iteration of their great product which now includes Twitter, Flickr and Facebook integration. Awesomeness…
Full lowdown and (completely unbiased) review coming soon. Promise.

Nex, I was going to blog about the FOWAs. But to be honest there were only a couple of things that came out of that that are worth mentioning – so I’ll do it here:

1) I got to meet Jyri, industry hero and founder of Jaiku.

Which was just cool.

2) I got to meet Vero – aka thatcanadiangirl.

She’s a great blogger, a great girl and best of all… a great geek!

And finally… The best thing about the FOWAs?

The themes of openess and web 2.0ness that I’ve been discussing with my close friends, peers and colleagues (ie that podcast I did for instance), well those themes (some of which I’m actually writing a paper on at the moment – more on that when I finally get off my backside and finish it) were all very apparent at this event.
Seems like the rest of the world.industry is finally waking up! Rock..

Ok – so that’s the FOWAs done. Tick that box…

Oh – and as an FYI – The FOWAs were put together by the uber smart guys over at Carsonified.
Who do a whole host of similar events…

One of which is coming up in a couple of weeks and is called: The Future of Mobile… or The FOM.
I first heard about this event when I was still working with Mippin and was particularly interested because my then CEO, Scott Beaumont (no link – sorry – where’s your blog gone Scott?) was scheduled to be one of the speakers..

I’m not entirely sure that is still the case at this time (and am currently awaiting confirmation) but either way it should still be a great event (it’s being held at The IMAX for crying out loud!) with some great speakers and a fantastic after-party too.. Hehehe…
Someone who definitely will be speaking is my main man Dan Appelquist (whom I mentioned in my last post).
He’ll be talking about: Life Beyond WAP: Advance Browsing, Mobile Ajax, and the Future of the Mobile Web.

So yeah – I’ve got my ticket… Have you?

Now moving on from the Future of Mobile to the very future-looking Mobile Geeks of London who held their second group meet up recently. This poor boy had to miss the event but the guys made sure that I wasn’t missed..
As you can see below…

Bless ’em… Champers?! For me?! Ooo… Suit you sir!

Anyways – I must take a moment to extend much Whatley-Love to a few people who made sure that even without the host with most – MGoL will still meet & geek!

First up: Peter Romiszewski – or ‘Romek’ for short, big geek and a great Jaiku buddy to boot.

Next: Richard Hyndman – ex-colleague from Refresh Mobile and master of all things Mippin
(who doesn’t actually have a blog so I’ve linked you to his Jaiku – hope you don’t mind Rich!)

And Finally: Ed Cave – Txt2Lock Guru, nice bloke and attendee of the original ‘Geeks’.

Cheers guys. Much love and many a beer to be provided at MGoL III…
Something that is currently on my radar and my even sneak in before the end of 2007!
You heard it here first! Shh!

Now – that’s covered off everything that I wanted to write about in my last but one post…
But I still have to SO MUCH to blog:

  • My business trip to San Francisco, (well – everything that happened after the first 24hrs anyway)
  • Social Networks through SpinVox
  • And all of the news and coverage that followed that… Because it’s NOW LIVE folks! Go! Get it!
  • A couple of other blogging projects that I want to talk about
  • Mobile Geeks of London III (I’m waiting on ONE PERSON to come back to me before we move ahead)

And a whole host of other things too I’m sure…

…so keep checking back folks – more to come… very soon.

Until then.

WD signing off.

The Mobile Geeks of London

Hello all,

Following on from an earlier post – allow me to tell you a story…

It started as a simple question ‘Hey, we both live in London, do you fancy a drink sometime?’
That question was asked from one avid Jaiku fan to another.
(Yours truly and a guy named Romek)

From there – it snowballed…
We found a channel on Jaiku specifically for UK Jaiku users – called JaikUK

Then – upon finding that channel – I decided that’d be a great idea if we had a Facebook Group too.
And so Mobile Geeks of London was born…

It was, at first, made as a ‘base of operations’ if you will for me and a few fellow ‘mobilists’ who I knew lived in and around our great city to come together and chat…
And then, word got out that two of the members were meeting for a beer.

“Sod it!” I thought “Why not make it a full-blown facebook event?!”

And so I did.
Next thing I knew – SMS Text News picked up on it and ran it as a story – and overnight the group went from around 10 members to 110!

The Date: Thursday 26th July
The Event: The first ever Mobile Geeks of London meet up
The Place: A Pub in London
The Attendees: Mobile Geeks!

It. Was Great.

The whole evening had this kind of unofficial theme of ‘Show & Tell’

Some folk were there showing off new software – some other folk were throwing new mobile ideas around and some folk were just showing off their various handsets… an iPhone even made it along!
Hehehe…

However, I must admit, I think that was probably the main lure for peeps coming along in the first place!

Everyone wanted to touch it!
Hehehe – Here’s some photos from the evening folks – enjoy!

Geeks – Phones – Beer – Heaven

James Body. He of Truphone fame.
With my iPhone and his E61i.
Which one do you prefer?

My new friend Peter (aka Romek).
He was the guy that originally asked me out for a Mobile Geek drink!
It’s all his fault I swear it!

iPhone-tastic!

All in all the night was a resounding success and I’ve received lots of messages of praise for organising it all.

I couldn’t have done it without my good friend Technokitten who was on hand to offer assistance when the whole thing started getting a bit out of hand!

So – if you’re a Mobile Geek and you live in London – why not join the group and maybe we’ll see you at the next meet!
🙂