Marek Pawlowski, Editorial Director, PMN

Detailed bio

Marek leads the development of the MEX conferences and research services for PMN. Since founding PMN in 1995, Marek has focused the company's activities on helping the mobile telecoms industry to improve its understanding of customers and translate that understanding into better user experience and increased profitability.
In addition to his extensive research portfolio for PMN, he is widely published in print and digital media, a frequent speaker at international conferences and provides commentary for leading broadcast channels such as the BBC and CNN.

Web

pmn.co.uk

Rachel Hinman, Experience Design Director, Adaptive Path

Tell us who you are and what you do in 160 characters

Strategist, designer, researcher, writer, artist. Continually fascinated by the interconnection of technology, people and culture. Constantly curious.

Why did we choose them as a speaker?

Rachel is one of those rare individuals adept as both a practitioner and theorist in user experience. She brings a genuine passion to her chosen field, including undertaking personal projects like '90 Mobiles in 90 Days', where she spent 3 months exploring cutting edge mobile concepts and sharing them through a specially created blog. At Adaptive Path she has worked at the forefront of new user research methodology and effectively translating that into actionable insights.

Detailed bio

Rachel Hinman is the Mobile Experience Design Director for Adaptive Path. With over a decade of design industry experience, she is a strong believer in approaching mobile design and strategy from an empathic, human-centered
perspective. At Adaptive Path, Rachel applies her unique and creative perspective to the design process, enabling innovative mobile solutions that have a positive impact on people's lives.
Prior to joining Adaptive Path, Rachel worked within Yahoo!'s mobile group, employing user-centered methods to inform the design and strategy of Yahoo!'s mobile products. Much of her work-to-date has focused on improving the experience of accessing internet content on a mobile device.
Rachel writes and speaks frequently on the topic of mobile research and design and her perspective on mobile user experience has been featured in Businessweek, Interactions Magazine and through her contributions to the Adaptive Path blog. She is the creative force behind the 90 Mobiles in 90 Days project and a recognized thought leader in the mobile user experience field.

Web

adaptivepath.com

Priya Prakash, Creative Director, Consumer Experience, Nokia

Tell us who you are and what you do in 160 characters

Priya is a disruptive instigator who enjoys 'playing seriously' so she can fail faster to learn more.

Why did we choose them as a speaker?

We first heard Priya presenting on the art of persuasion in mobile service design and realised immediately her combination of passion and knowledge would enliven the debate at MEX. Her experience across publishing, broadcast and retail has given her a refreshingly broad perspective, helping her to develop an enviable mobile success story at Flirtomatic. Until recently she was Iconmobile's Head of Strategic Design and has now joined Nokia as their Creative Director - Consumer Experience (CX).

Detailed bio

Priya enjoys crafting simple, fun, addictive tools to enable conversations and experiences underpinned by robust business models. Her expertise lies in developing and managing the complete customer experience for products and services.

Over the past ten years, she has built and led product development teams. Her teams have shipped - BBC iMP (iPlayer), BBC Mobile portal, Trusted Places, Project Kangaroo (initial proposal), the Digital Wellbeing Showroom, Sugarscape (Hachette Filipacchi), significantly increased Flirtomatic's user revenues and until recently was leading strategic design at Icon Mobile. She has worked in various capacities as - senior interaction designer, implementation manager, creative director, innovation executive, head of product and strategic design.

She has just joined Nokia - Consumer Experience (CX) Team as their Creative director (CX) to help create a quality of experience that is "seamless, effortless and delightful" across all Nokia product and service touch-points.

Prakash is a RSA fellow with a MA in Interaction Design from Royal College of Art and holds patents for iPlayer.

What will they be talking about at MEX?

Designers and product developers have traditionally been led to believe that the better and richer the user experience for a product or service, the more it has a positive impact on attracting new users, increasing usage and retention. But what if users don't value the richer experience unless they pay for it?

If a richer experience is completely free, do all users need a 'rich' service experience even if they are in different levels of their service discovery cycle? Not really, as this can actually disorientate users who don't need that depth of richness, as they are still early in their service discovery journey and haven't fully engaged with all aspects.

So, how do we as product developers, craft services where users value the richer experience in a way where the basic experience is free, but to enhance the overall level of enjoyment of the 'free' version, they are willing to upgrade and pay to access premium parts of the service? Pricing plays a big part in helping users make that decision. Before purchase, when a user does the cost versus benefits analysis in their head, there is a big opportunity for product developers to leverage 'ease of user experience' where users can benefit from saving time and effort compared to using the same experience for free with more effort and hassle involved.

For example, iTunes pricing of individual tracks and the overall ease of use of buying a particular track in context of listening to your library, is seamless. If you compare this with the effort of going to Pirate Bay, Bit Torrent or similar services where one needs to hunt and locate the best source to download a particular movie or track, the experience involves more effort and time. The majority of users prefer to pay a nominal amount for an iTunes track, as it saves them from doing all the extra legwork with an added advantage of discovering tracks when listening to their library. In South Korea, Cyworld - a mobile social network with a user base of 15 million (one-fourth of the Korean population) - has elevated this to an art form. They have users hooked on games where users will pay for accessing more interactive features to enhance their basic (free) gaming experience.

Also pricing needs to reflect and fuel demand. Having scarcity when one has a digital virtual goods inventory is a paradox, but artificial scarcity creates desire and, again, if there is something limited, customers like to be part of the select few who either can experience it or even own it. Facebook's gift shop also thrives on this idea of only having X number of a particular virtual goods left and displaying the tangible number below the gift item. In the physical world, Yo Sushi's dynamic pricing that customers see changing everyday reflects the demand for particular dish, and adds positively to the overall customer experience as it creates transparency.

To craft the Fremium funnel (where most of the service is free but the user pays for value-added-services which in turn make their user experience richer), the initial experience of the service becomes even more important as it needs to be simple, but also show a snapshot of a richer experience by allowing the user to sample something small, which in turn enhances their experience and makes the service addictive. The free sampling incentivises the user to dip their toes further into the service, making discovery an enjoyable process, so when they upgrade, it seems natural in their journey. Again, making registration not a barrier to entry but a part of the discovery fuels the Freemium model. User details should only be needed when there is an exchange of some value to the user out of a particular interaction.

This was illustrated recently when Jared Spool's UX company increased revenues of his client by USD 300 million dollars by changing the button from 'Register' to 'Continue' in the buying process, thus getting rid of abandoned shopping carts.

Engaging users in a way where they haven't yet test-driven the service is another challenge for product developers working on Freemium models. Creating excitement and amusement while waiting to engage with the service, is key to get users to pay for the promised experience. Disney does this very well. When one goes to visit the Disney amusement park, the waiting in the queue is a pleasurable experience. It creates enjoyable anticipation and so when you walk through the doors, you really look forward to your first joy-ride. Showcasing potential flirts on the popular flirt wall to pique new users interest is one way Flirtomatic tries to get people to join the service.

So to sum up, if one is looking at monetising the customer experience, there are a couple of service frameworks that one needs to consider in the service design:

- Price v Ease of Use
- Convenience v Free
- Spectacle v Boring
- Expressways v Scenic discovery
- Sampling single experiences in succession v Showing all the bells and whistles of the service in one go
- Active listening v Passive engagement
- Scarcity v Limitless

Web

priyascape.com

Christophe Ramstein, Chief Technology Officer, Immersion

Why did we choose them as a speaker?

Immersion is a true pioneer of haptics technology, bringing advanced tactile feedback to products across mobile, medical and other industries. As Chief Technology Officer, Christophe is able to provide an insight into the science of haptics, the challenges and opportunities for the mobile industry and a vision of what will be possible in the future.

Detailed bio

With over 15 years experience in haptics and multimodal technology, Mr. Ramstein leads Immersion's global research and development with a focus on touch innovation and the future of user experience. Passionate about the limitless potential of user experience, Ramstein promotes touch as the cornerstone of the next generation of user interfaces. His tenure at Immersion includes senior positions in software development, engineering and research covering several key focal areas for user experience innovation including mobility, medical simulation and more. Before joining Immersion in 2000, Ramstein co-founded Haptic Technologies Inc, a leading-edge award-winning haptics company, as chief architect. Prior to that he was the senior scientist at Industry Canada and created innovative user interfaces for astronauts and the visually-impaired. Ramstein is both an author and co-author of numerous haptic patents. He holds a Master's from the Institute Joseph Fourier as well as a PhD in Applied Mathematics for real-time physical modeling, simulation, gesture analysis, and composition for musical creation from the Polytechnic Institute in France.

What will they be talking about at MEX?

Creating dramatically better mobile user experience is one of the great imperatives of our industry, with mobile devices transforming from mere cell phones into the ultimate digital companions for always-on communications, productivity and entertainment. With all technology has to offer, people are exhausted with information overload, strained eyes, small keyboards and the challenge of interacting with tiny buttons and clumsy interfaces. As an industry we look for ways to reduce these frictions while delivering something truly unique. That something is touch - an innate communications channel that will become a fundamental aspect of mobile user experience, giving people more fulfilling interactions through their devices - engaging not just eyes and ears, but fingers and hands for greater clarity and simplicity. Touch is the future of the mobile user interface, and Immersion is the future of touch.

Web

immersion.com

Robert Fabricant, Executive Creative Director, Frog Design

Tell us who you are and what you do in 160 characters

I am Robert Fabricant, leading a multidisciplinary creative team in New York and I'm inspired by the positive social impact of mobile technology.

Why did we choose them as a speaker?

Robert led Frog's recent project to drive the user experience of an AIDS awareness campaign in South Africa, making extensive use of mobile technology to succeed. In addition to his leadership work at Frog Design, one of the best known and longest established user interface agencies, Robert brings a keen understanding of customer lifestyles and the passion to translate that knowledge into great product experiences.

Detailed bio

Robert Fabricant is an Executive Creative Director at frog Design where he leads frog's efforts to expand it's creative offerings into new markets and disciplines. Robert has been with frog since 2001 and has worked since then in a broad range of initiatives that span product design, interaction design, environments, service design and branded experiences. He has worked with clients such as MTV, GE, Cox Communications, Virgin Mobile, Barnes & Noble, BBC and Humana and designed integrated user experiences for numerous platforms, including handheld devices, in-car information systems, medical devices, retail environments, networked applications and desktop software. He also leads frog's social impact initiatives such as Project Masiluleke.
Prior to frog, Robert led the Research & Development team at Organic and worked as a designer and creative director at @radicalmedia, Microsoft Research and Edwin Schlossberg Inc. He is an adjunct professor at NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program and the School of Visual Arts.
His interactive work has been featured in ID magazine, Wired magazine, the Wall Street Journal and has presented at Pop!tech, SXSW, IxDA and many other industry conferences.

What will they be talking about at MEX?

The purpose of this talk is to inspire the audience with the wealth of grassroots efforts that demonstrate the positive social impact of mobile technologies...and to then challenge them to help us bring these efforts to scale. The talk will focus on healthcare as an example and provide a survey of the application of SMS to encourage positive behavior regarding personal health. This is happening around the world with pilots that address issues as broad as diabetes, depression, osteoporosis, cleft palette and HIV.

I will do a deep dive into Project Masiluleke to show how the application of strategic design and technology with support from network operators can bring incredible scale to these initiatives and magnify their impact substantially. I will highlight the role of MTN as a partner and discuss some of the challenges involved in building trust and support for this initiative with network operators. I will also highlight the incredible opportunity to learn about the role of mobile technologies through these kind of initiatives. In the case of Project M, it has inspired our corporate healthcare clients to explore how these models of engagement can be applied to their businesses.

The discussion would then look at the challenges of bringing these efforts to scale and gaining greater access to mobile networks for social impact initiatives. In the case of project M we are demonstrating a model for addressing chronic illness that can be applied to HIV globally as well as other epidemics. But there is a huge challenge in building support country by country, carrier by carrier. I work closely with a broad spectrum of social entrepreneurs in fields like energy, education and health and they are all faced with the same challenge: How can we build broader trust with the application providers, device manufacturers and network operators to get support for these initiatives? frog is looking to create a set of demonstration projects like Project M – high profile projects with measurable results that, we hope, will encourage broader adoption across Regions and carriers. We refer to this as our Mobile Mandate. We are committed to working with our corporate partners to launch a series of initiatives over the next few years that not only have immediate social impact, but build greater support across the mobile industry.

Web

frogdesign.com

Hampus Jakobsson, Co-founder and Vice President of Business Development, TAT

Tell us who you are and what you do in 160 characters

Fast talking, fishitarian, reader, with an infant at home, loves to get things done efficiently, and has a a serious passion for business and change.

Why did we choose them as a speaker?

We knew we needed a strongly opinionated and visionary speaker to take on MEX Manifesto statement no. 1 at the conference, which will challenge the industry to think differently about the design of application stores. Aside from founding TAT, which provides the UI platform for more than 250m handsets around the world, Hampus is never afraid to step away from the company line and provoke new thinking about a subject. We're looking forward to hearing his straight talking, controversial presentation.

Detailed bio

Hampus was one of the founders of TAT, and has there driven sales, strategy, and business development. Prior to founding TAT, Hampus worked as an engineer for ad agencies and mobile game companies and holds a MsCS degree.

What will they be talking about at MEX?

When it comes to app stores, in the present rush to catch up with the Apple we can anticipate a fragmented and disjointed experience for user - in the apps which are available to them, in the discovery mechanisms, and where those storefronts actually exist (native, web, side-loading, etc...). It is this year's Wild West gold rush. But nobody knows how far to go yet.
OEMs with limited product lines have control over their platform, and for better or worse, this generally means control over the user experience. But what of the open OS? Device fragmentation? Independent aggregators? How about operators? Instead of thinking how to simply implement the same rule book as Apple created, we should be looking at how to make the app store a different game altogether.
In order to compete and retain user interest in a more competitive market, the next generation of app stores will have to be social, intuitive, and flexible.
The user will need recommendations which go beyond the automated Amazon-like systems and embrace social recommendations. The app store must understand the user context - at the same time as finding solutions for device fragmentation, we will be embracing pushed content into niches which will be found through our location, our behaviour, and preferences. The usage, presentation and entry points will move towards seamlessness and flexibility. Application discovery will be a pervasive principle not just in a silo app, but throughout the UI.
Many will get trampled in the rush for their app store, unless they realise that there are a lot more prospects on the horizon.

Web

tat.se

Haslina Dawam, General Manager of Messaging & Support, Celcom Mobile Malaysia

Tell us who you are and what you do in 160 characters

I'm Haslina Dawam, I develop messaging based services. I flew 13 hrs specially for MEX's take-away!

Why did we choose them as a speaker?

We met Haslina last year and were immediately impressed by the innovations she was leading at one of Malaysia's largest operators. She's been responsible for the rollout of several new services at Celcom, including mobile instant messaging, and is committed to fostering customer-centred thinking at all levels of the company. When we heard about the success of the mobile financial services project, we knew it was exactly the the right kind of story to illustrate our MEX Manifesto statement in this area.

Detailed bio

I am currently the General Manager for Messaging & Support, in the Product & Services Innovation Division of Celcom Mobile Malaysia.

Having graduated in BSc. Chemical Engineering from University of Lincoln Nebraska, USA, I developed an interest in human relations and communications later in my career. The GSM business in Malaysia was then in its infancy and I took the plunge, venturing into the mobile industry. I am still intrigued and challenged by the mobile technology and business.

I started my career in this industry at local regional level - with frontline responsibilities, progressing to service center management, encompassing customer services, credit control, marketing, administration and finance. Soon after, advanced to central operation at Celcom Head Office - developing & managing operational policies, while supporting service centers nationwide.

Later I took on the challenge of pioneering international business for the roaming segment - building the International Roaming business from zero to an effective and profitable level.

Upon the merging and consolidation of the two big mobile players - Celcom and Telekom Cellular(GLC), I built the trust to manage two departments in the new realm of product development & management, simultaneously.

I participate as a speaker in the industry congress, and collaborate with the GSMA on PIM, IM Hub and Mobile Advertising initiatives. I am currently Celcom's representative for the steering committee on GSMA's initiative in IM Hubbing.

What will they be talking about at MEX?

My presentation gives an insight to the unique blend of Malaysian mobile users from a multi-racial nation with diverse range of faiths, cultures and lifestyles. I will share with the audience, the challenges and intrigues in developing products & services for these users.

We have come a long way from attempting to assimilate the mobile technologies' palate across the users, to the understanding and managing of the users' behaviours & expectations – a shift from technology centric, to user centric. Embracing this paradigm shift is the beginning of our challenge, as we customise the products and services for best user process, towards best user experience.

We strive for product innovation victories, which sometimes come from something surprisingly simple, yet creative and effective – a project that I will share in the session.

Web

celcom.com.my

Sian Townsend, User Experience Researcher, Google

Tell us who you are and what you do in 160 characters

Sian - insatiably curious globe trotting investigator of mobile user experiences from Japan to Uganda since 2000. Ex-Vodafone, various start-ups, now at Google

Why did we choose them as a speaker?

Sian was recommended to us by her colleague Paul Adams, who gave an acclaimed presentation on mobile lifestyles in developing markets at last year's MEX. She has been deeply involved in a pioneering Google project to extend a very different mobile web experience to customers in Africa and we're delighted she can share her insights with us at MEX this year.

Detailed bio

Sian Townsend is an international User Experience Researcher at Google. Her special research interests are Mobile Search, SMS, and Mobile for Emerging Users. At Google, Sian works with multiple teams to help them understand in detail how people use Google search around the world, what their information needs are and how all of this impacts product design.

She also works with Google.org, the philanthropic arm of Google, to conduct user experience research into mobile products for emerging users. This has included research trips to Africa where she conducted research to understand the information needs of target users in Uganda by mimicking a search engine using SMS and human experts.

Prior to joining Google in March 2007, Sian freelanced on Mobile UX projects for Nokia, Sian was a UX Manager at Vodafone's Global User Experience team, and worked for 2 start-ups (Scan Mobile and Digital Rum) designing and researching SMS and WAP based mobile services for clients such as Orange, T-Mobile, Argos and Odeon Cinemas.

Sian holds an MSc in Human-Computer Interaction with Ergonomics from UCL and a BSc in International Politics.

http://www.linkedin.com/in/siantownsend

Web

google.com

Steve Martin, Vice President of Engineering, Monotype Imaging

Why did we choose them as a speaker?

Steve is the creative force behind Monotype's efforts to enhance the display of text on mobile handsets. With data-based services accounting for an ever-increasing percentage of industry revenues, we found it incredible that more attention wasn't being focused on the importance of fonts, readability and the user experience of text. Steve brings that focus to MEX, coupled with a broad knowledge of his subject area.

Detailed bio

Steve Martin is responsible for the development of Monotype Imaging software products, including font rendering subsystems, multilingual technologies, printer drivers and color imaging tool kits. He also oversees the development of typefaces that operate within Monotype Imaging technologies.
Prior to joining Monotype Imaging in 2005, Martin spent 10 years at Scansoft (now Nuance), beginning as a software architect and eventually becoming vice president of new product development, responsible for imaging applications. Prior to Scansoft, Martin was employed at ExperVision, a startup company focused on optical character recognition technologies.
Martin earned his master's in engineering at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., where he studied graphics rendering and user interface design.

Web

monotypeimaging.com

Philippe Jeanrenaud, Marketing Director, EMEA, Nuance

Tell us who you are and what you do in 160 characters

Long history with speech technology, from the first app in labs, to Wildfire, a milestone in great user experience, to Nuance where we are helping redefine the mobile experience.

Why did we choose them as a speaker?

Philippe's deep knowledge of mobile input technologies and broad intellectual curiosity combines to make him a compelling speaker. Quite apart from Nuance's dominance of the market for predictive text, voice and handwriting input, Philippe brings his own fresh ideas and a willingness to engage in truly open debate.

Detailed bio

Philippe Jeanrenaud joined Nuance early 2005 to lead the mobile marketing activities in EMEA, promoting Nuance’s mobile solutions to carriers and OEMs. Philippe has over 15 year of experience in the development and deployment of speech-based applications in the telephony environment. Prior to joining Nuance Philippe worked at BBN, PureSpeech, Wildfire and Orange where he was heading the Speech Technology group. During his tenure at Wildfire, he worked on large-scale deployments of speech-enabled voicemail platforms for major US and European wireless carriers; after the acquisition by Orange in 2000, he led technology integration projects with some of Orange’s key partners.

Philippe has a Diploma from the Swiss Institute of Technology (Lausanne) and a MS from the Georgia Institute of Technology (Atlanta). Philippe also holds a Management degree from the MIT Sloan School.

What will they be talking about at MEX?

There is stronger evidence than ever that it would just take the right ingredients to spread the use of mobile applications or services and that powerful input is one of the keys to unlock this potential. Highlighted in a recent survey commissioned by Nuance, we found that:

• 65% of respondents rate ease of use as the first feature they will consider when selecting a new device, ahead of camera and battery life.
• While the relative importance of display, input capabilities and UI varies as a function of the task, all 3 are perceived as important, especially by power-users.

In fact, most people (75%) agree that they would use more services if the navigation tools and the interface were better.

To address the challenge of simpler and better input modalities in a mobile environment, both speech recognition and smart keypad technologies are key. Speech recognition allows today a user to enter a query by voice into a browser or dictate a message to be sent as text or email; smart keypad technologies provides a powerful framework to enter text from any type of keyboard, leveraging prediction, error correction and custom vocabularies. Both modalities need to work closely together as the situation, physical limitations may require one over the other.

From the user experience standpoint, several challenges need to be highlighted: how do you engage users to go beyond the initial hurdles? How do you maximize the overall user experience while taking into account the intrinsic limitations of the technologies? Ultimately, where will innovation come from?

Web

nuance.com/mobileexperience

Andrew Muir Wood, Doctoral Researcher, Institute for Manufacturing, University of Cambridge

Tell us who you are and what you do in 160 characters

I'm Andrew Muir Wood, I'm fascinated by the evolutions and trajectories in mobile phone design and I think we are experiencing the start of a new era of mobile.

Why did we choose them as a speaker?

As part of his doctoral thesis at Cambridge Andrew has spent months searching through back issues of technology magazines dating back to 1996, painstakingly analysing the form factor and colour of the mobile handsets featured. When he got in touch to share the details of his project and respond to one of this year's MEX Manifesto statements we were equally amazed by the insights he'd discovered and his dedication to quantifying the mobile user experience.

Detailed bio

Andrew is currently in the 3rd year of his PhD in the Design Management group at Cambridge's Institute for Manufacturing. He studied product design and manufacture at Loughborough University, during which he spent a year developing products at Gillette's R&D centre in Reading. His research examines the trajectories of product aesthetics, markets, technologies and society over time in order to establish a dynamic contextual view of the landscape in which products and brands must operate.

Web

ifm.eng.cam.ac.uk/ctm/idm/

John Forsyth, Leadership Team, Technology, Symbian Foundation

Detailed bio

John Forsyth worked with Symbian Software from its inception, holding a diverse range of roles and helping to shape the design and development of Symbian over its ten year life, including leading a UX design team which generated numerous patents relating to mobile interfaces and mobile services. In his role as Symbian's VP Strategy, John was responsible for leading the development of Symbian's business strategy and overseeing the evolution of Symbian OS as a software platform. John joined the Symbian Foundation Leadership Team in order to help build the community that will create and develop a software platform for the next generation of computing, and because it was easily the scariest job around at the time.

John occasionally finds time for outside interests in politics, opera, cooking, diving and trekking. He is also a bike obsessive to a degree that pretty much no-one would consider healthy.

twitter: johnmforsyth
linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/johnmforsyth

Why did we choose them as a speaker?

John is a strategic thinker much admired throughout the mobile business. He participated at one of our first MEX conferences and we're delighted he is returning to share his insights on handset platform economics. Deeply involved in the integration of Symbian into Nokia, there are few people better placed to understand what it takes to lay the foundations of a truly mass market mobile platform.

Web

symbian.com

Sandy Fershee, Founding Partner, Frank First

Tell us who you are and what you do in 160 characters

I'm Sandy Fershee. Variety & evolution in human behavior inspires me. Observing, envisioning, creating - I love designing mobile experiences that work well.

Why did we choose them as a speaker?

When Sandy got in touch with her response to our MEX Manifesto statement on the user experience of location aware services, we knew we'd found our keynote speaker for this area. We've known Sandy for some time, visiting with her in New York shortly after she set-up her user experience consultancy Frank First and have always been impressed by her genuine commitment to understanding user behaviour and translating that knowledge into better product experiences.

Detailed bio

Sandy Fershee is a Founding Partner at Frank First, a design agency focusing on mobile user experience. Sandy derives great satisfaction from creating things that work well. A leader in user experience design, she offers a decade of expertise in the mobile arena. From designing mobile products for AT&T and Motorola, to consulting for successful start-ups and Fortune 100s, she has worked with some of the most forward-thinking companies in the world.

What will they be talking about at MEX?

Envisioning new ways to harness location aware services: Location and the collective experience
We're moving beyond a time of tweets and facebook updates screaming me, me, me, and beyond just showing me "what's near". There's an opportunity to harness location tagged data and expose it in new and meaningful ways. Revealing the collective experience could influence people's behavior and provide new opportunities for exploration, discovery and participation. With this in mind, there's also an opportunity to rethink mobile UIs - focusing more on integrated and personalized experiences rather than application silos and dispersed services.

Web

frankfirst.com

Gareth Smith, The Wombile Project

Tell us who you are and what you do in 160 characters

Whether it's theory or practice; art, science, maths or engineering: I'm usually fascinated.

Why did we choose them as a speaker?

We attended one of Gareth's lectures at Imperial College a few months ago and came away fascinated by the Wombile platform. By abstracting data from location-aware objects in numerous different games into a single, centralised resource, Wombile elegantly overcomes the 'empty rooms' problem which limits the adoption of so many mobile games. With Wombile, a player in one gaming universe can, unknowingly, be influencing the environment of a completely different game. Such a uniquely creative approach takes a unique mind and we're delighted Gareth will be at MEX to share his perspective on the future of location-aware services and the user experience.

Detailed bio

Gareth founded the wombile project when he talked some friends into spending a week building a GPS-enabled MMORPG for a competition. When the week was over they realised they had something more interesting than a game: the seeds of a location-aware community-transcending mobile media platform.

Gareth is also a final year PhD student at Imperial College, and spends his weekdays applying spatial logics to the problem of verifying web programs. In a past life he has was an R&D Engineer at the BBC, where he worked on projects as diverse as: automatically measuring how much attention a person is paying to their TV; and designing an AI system to diagnose faults in a distribution network.

Web

wombile.com

Ken Blakeslee, Chairman, WebMobility Ventures

Why did we choose them as a speaker?

We're still searching for a technology Ken hasn't tried before us. A veteran of the mobile telecoms industry at the most senior levels, Ken is constantly at the cutting edge of the business, spotting trends before they emerge on the mainstream radar. He has participated at all 5 MEX conferences, helping to stimulate great debate as a chairman, team leader and a judge of the MEX Awards.

Detailed bio

Ken's involvement over the past few years has been specifically in the area of private equity investing in the mobile sector, and his previous experience in developing telecoms, IT and web commerce business strategies spans 25+ years. His recent focus has been on the emerging new media content, applications and commerce methodologies, and the merging of these with the ubiquitous, personal access of mobile.
Ken's company, WebMobility Ventures, focuses on private investing and advising companies on bringing innovations in multimedia mobility to market. Prior to that he was Chairman of WirelessWorks with The Vesta Group, managing the investments of one of Europe's top networked venture capital funds, Frontiers Capital. Now fully invested, this fund focused on Mobile Internet enabling technologies and was a joint initiative between Vesta and the Carphone Warehouse. In addition to being a venture partner, he established and was Chairman of their Board of Advisors. He has also served on the board of directors and advisory board of several companies, all innovatively active in various sectors of mobile investment, product definition and service delivery. Previously, he was VP of Business Strategy for Wireless Internet at Nortel Networks.
Ken has held numerous industry positions including chairman of the Mobile Data Association, vice chair of the UMTS Forum Market Aspects Group, and in 2001 was named to the GSM Association 'roll of honour' for 'longstanding commitment to the GSM industry'. In 2004 Ken launched and produced 'Cool and Connected' a 'Wearable Technology Fashion Show' and in 2006 the 'Innovation Showcase' of emerging key technologies at 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona and also at the International Broadcasters Conference in Amsterdam.
Ken was born, raised and educated in New England, USA (NH and Maine mostly) and has settled in the UK 'for the time being' (24 years so far!).

Web

kblakeslee@webmobility.com

Rudy de Waele, Founder, m-Trends.org

Why did we choose them as a speaker?

Arguably one of the best connected people in the mobile business, Rudy is an ideal choice for judging the MEX Awards. He has an encyclopedic knowledge of the mobile start-up scene through his consultancy work, conferences and as founder of MobileMonday Barcelona.

Detailed bio

Advisor, Strategy & Market Development - Enabling Next Generation Mobile & Web Services Strategies
Rudy De Waele, a Belgian, living and working in Barcelona, Spain has been working in internet media since 1995 and in mobile since 1999. Often invited as a speaker and contributing writer to a number of professional publications, his visionary thoughts on Mobile 2.0 have gone around the world. You can view his last presentation on the subject at www.slideshare.net/rudydw/mobile-20-plugg.
Currently he works with dotopen, an open innovation consulting firm advising start-ups and established companies with their strategic positioning, defining business models, creating alliances, and identifying market and funding opportunities.
Rudy is a creative, visionary, thoughtful and self-motivated strategist with international technology platform experience across the Internet, Mobile Internet and Wireless Media. Well-connected among key players in the digital media distribution and global mobile value chain players, he has worked on projects as diverse as R&D, competitive intelligence analysis, digital concept, content and event development, mobile and digital music distribution, building communities, social network analysis and development, and content integration of wiki's, blogs, moblogs and RSS feed technologies.
He is also part of the organizing committee of Mobile 2.0 Conference in San Francisco and the founder of MobileMonday Barcelona and MobileMonday Madrid.

Web

m-trends.org

Mike Grenville, Founder, 160characters.org

Why did we choose them as a speaker?

Mike has been a key figure in the MEX community from the outset, taking part at all 5 MEX conferences. We're delighted he'll be returning as a team leader for the 2009 event. His focus on emerging markets issues and sustainable technology has been an inspiration for many of our MEX Manifestos.

Detailed bio

Mike founded 160Characters.org in 2001 to promote and report on the potential he saw then of mobile messaging. Activities of the forum include news, seminars and the annual Global Mobile Messaging Industry Awards. Mike is also a journalist and a frequent conference speaker about mobile messaging. He is also a campaigner and speaker on environmental issues.

Web

160characters.org

Andrew Grill, Mobile Advertising Evangelist, LondonCalling.mobi

Tell us who you are and what you do in 160 characters

Based in London Andrew is an experienced General Manager and mobile advertising practitioner, leading mobile advertising evangelist and thought leader. He also runs londoncalling.mobi

Why did we choose them as a speaker?

We met Andrew at a MobileMonday event and, several months later, when we were looking for team leaders for MEX 2009, his insightful conversation remained fresh in our minds. Andrew is a great public speaker and a hub for the mobile advertising business, stimulating debate through his popular blog and making the user experience better for end customers with his consultancy work for major companies in this area.

Detailed bio

Based in London, Andrew is an experienced General Manager and mobile advertising practitioner, as well as a leading mobile advertising evangelist and thought leader.
A former resident of Sydney, for the last 4 years he has been active in the European market, and such he has a deep understanding of the digital, mobile and advertising space and is well connected to leading advertising agencies in London. He also sits on the UK Committee of the Mobile Marketing Association.
His career spans over 20 years working in senior positions across the entire value chain and as such has a deep understanding of the Telco and mobile advertising market from vendor, operator, analyst, consultant and media viewpoints.
Andrew has practical experience in developing and running mobile advertising campaigns, as well as constructing mobile advertising networks. Currently, he is directly engaged as head of business development on a consulting basis for a leading mobile advertising company.
He is also engaged with large consumer brands such as Procter and Gamble, as well as leading advertising agencies such as Ogilvy and Publicis to design and deliver compelling mobile advertising propositions.
With Ogilvy, he brokered a partnership leading to a client's mobile advertising technology being showcased in their London innovation lab and was asked to speak at the Ogilvy annual Telco conference on mobile advertising in Barcelona in February 2009.
Andrew has extensive experience working directly with leading mobile operators such as Vodafone, O2 Telefonica, Orange and T-Mobile in the UK, Europe, Australia and New Zealand. 
Andrew's experience in the telco space extends to having sold directly to Vodafone Group as well as senior marketing and business development roles with Australian carriers Telstra and Optus. In addition, while in Australia he worked at an executive level for the country's largest interactive agency, Legion Interactive on a range of innovative mobile solutions across the consumer and business markets.
Andrew also has extensive contacts across the advertising and telco space, as a result of working in the EU market with telco operators, equipment vendors, brands, agencies and marketing associations. Andrew is also a regular, and sought after conference presenter on mobile advertising, and is the editor and founder of one of the world's leading blogs on mobile advertising - www.LondonCalling.mobi

Web

londoncalling.mobi

Jo Rabin, CTO, dotMobi

Why did we choose them as a speaker?

With his long history in the mobile business Jo needs little introduction. We first met him at MobileMonday London, which he co-founded and have since worked closely to support a great partnership between MEX and MoMo. This will be will his 3rd year in a row as a team leader at MEX. We are always amazed at how someone with so much on his plate (in between running MobileMonday, Jo also works full time at CTO for dotMobi) manages to turn up to MEX and facilitate such great collaboration in his breakout groups.

Detailed bio

Jo Rabin is an independent consultant working in the mobile field. One of his major assignments at the moment is working with dotMobi (mTLD), the registry for .mobi top level domain). dotMobi has a special interest in providing an enhanced user experience of the Web from mobile devices. As part of his role he represents dotMobi at W3C, and is editor of the Mobile Web Best Practice Recommendations and co-editor of mobileOK Basic Tests. Other recent assignments have been with Segala (on whose behalf he was he was co-author of the W3C Web Content Labelling XG report), Flirtomatic and AmbieSense. He worked for a number of years with Reuters Limited where he held various roles, including CTO of Reuters Mobile as well as being responsible for the development of Reuters foreign exchange trading network. Earlier in his career he helped start the UK's first public electronic mail system, Telecom Gold.

Web

mtld.mobi

Stephanie Rieger, Founder, Yiibu

Why did we choose them as a speaker?

We first worked with Stephanie when she wrote an article for the MEX newsletter exploring the reality of mobile user experience in South East Asian countries. She subsequently helped structure a workshop on this topic at MEX 2008, providing detailed personas for the breakout teams to respond to. We're delighted she'll be bringing her combination of design skills, analytical insight and worldwide knowledge of user behaviour to lead a breakout team at MEX 2009.

Web

yiibu.com

Bryan Rieger, Founder, Yiibu

Why did we choose them as a speaker?

Bryan took part at MEX for the first time last year, leading an acclaimed workshop on the trade-off between fashion and functionality. He has since co-founded his own mobile user experience consultancy and a monthly gathering of mobile design professionals. A key member of the international mobile design community, Bryan is an ideal candidate to lead a MEX breakout team.

Web

yiibu.com

Neil Wooding, Mobile consultant, White Hart Media

Tell us who you are and what you do in 160 characters

Hi, I'm Neil Wooding. I bring together my experience and skills in design, branding & mobile development to delivery unique mobile experiences for customers

Why did we choose them as a speaker?

Neil has been working at the intersection of mobile and creative design for years. After defining the online presence of Psion, the pioneering British mobile manufacturer, he went on to build one of the first mobile application stores, long before the iPhone was even a glint in Apple's eye. Most recently he led Handango's community relations in Europe, providing him with the inside track on what really motivates mobile developers.

Detailed bio

Neil is a focused New Media & Mobile professional with a proven track record in delivering high quality results that meet client satisfaction across a spectrum of diverse organisations. He is a self-motivated, pragmatic individual who has developed strong communication and analytical skills, Neil is experienced in leading teams through periods of business change and has strong organisational and planning skills. In recent years, Neil has mainly been involved in the integrated development of profitable New Media and mobile solutions across a variety of blue chip clients. He is customer focused with a precision focus on meeting customer needs, both internal and external, by showing an understanding of the customer's requirements.

Norbert Metzner, Founder & Managing Partner, UICONsulting

Tell us who you are and what you do in 160 characters

I am an enthusiastic and experienced Mobile Telecommunications Executive, passionate and visionary. I appreciate the individuality of people and variety of cultures. Communication will help to better understand each other for more peace and wealth. Sharing emotions is a basic human demand – let’s respect this!

Why did we choose them as a speaker?

When Norbert first attended MEX in 2005 he was leading the device portfolio at T-Mobile International. At the time it was rare to find such awareness and enthusiasm for mobile user experience issues at a senior level within mobile operators. The industry has evolved significantly since then and Norbert continues to champion user-centred values, while combining his passion for better experience with the operational skills to really make change happen.

Detailed bio

Norbert has an interesting background and skill mix, a solid combination of network and handset know-how combined with engineering and marketing capabilities. Educated as an RF-engineer with a diploma from the University of the German Forces, Munich, he developed a user-centric thinking which enabled him to create some successful mobile devices. Norbert started at Siemens’ public network division where he developed radio network control algorithms and was involved in defining the future of mobile radio standards what we call 2.5G and 3G today. One of his next steps was Product Management of mobile devices at Siemens where he was leading the first Internet device and the first GPRS-platform. In 2002 he moved on to international mobile operators. He was in charge for the device part of Vodafone’s live! proposition and later on at T-Mobile International for the device portfolio definition, selection and market implementation. At Option Wireless he thought about the future of mobile data and identified mobile 2.0 – what is mobile data good for? – as the direction to go; applications and content will drive the uptake of mobile connectivity. Since 2008 he has worked as an independent consultant focusing on the user benefit of mobile communication building on the thesis that "communication = sharing emotions is a basic human demand."

Norbert is a professional with a proven track record in delivering high quality results and products that meet customer satisfaction. He is a self-motivated, pragmatic individual who has developed strong communication and analytical skills, Norbert is experienced in cross-functional leading teams of different cultures at different locations and has strong organizational and planning skills.

Web

linkedin.com/pub/0/510/36b