McGuire’s Law

Friday I participated in a very impressive event in Philadelphia completely organized by a group of volunteers from Wharton Business School.? Not surprisingly, I participated on the panel focused on Wireless and Telecom.? Other panels touched on Startups, Collaborative Software, Interactive Media, Mergers and Acquisitions, Internet and Web Services, Media and Entertainment, Venture Capital, and Non-Profit.? Keynotes were provided by Richard Simonson, CFO of Nokia, Rob Glaser, Founder and CEO or Real Networks, and Glenn Britt, CEO of Time Warner Cable.

I only have time for a few notes this morning, but I might come back to this topic later.

The Wireless/Telecom panel was given the topic “The Business of Wireless: When Everything Connects.”? The moderator of the panel was Amol Sharma, telecom reporter for The Wall Street Journal.? My fellow panelists included Dr. Lee McKnight, Founder and CEO of Wireless Grids Corporation, Derrick Oien, Co-founder and President of Intercasting Corporation, and Scott Snyder, President and CEO of Design Strategies International (and a professor at Wharton).

The description provided for the panel is a very long paragraph which starts with “The wireless industry is on the cusp of a dramatic transformation.? Higher bandwidths, coupled with more sophisticated mobile devices, will soon usher in a new generation of wireless tools and services whose capabilities go far beyond the mere ability to download e-mail, photos, and web content quickly.”? So Amol’s first question really teed up this discussion, asking what it will take for this to become reality.? In answering, I pointed to three factors that inhibit the adoption of great new mobile applications today: 1) Fear of billing surprises (“If I click on this, will I be charged something extra?”) 2) Discoverability (“How do I find great new mobile applications anyway, and how do I install them on my phone?”) 3) User interface (“How do you build a great new mobile application with this tiny screen and challenged keyboard?”).? Obviously, a big part of Sprint’s “Simply Everything” announcement last week was intended to address point 1.? Points 2 and 3 remain challenges.

The panel also discussed (at length) the “open” topic.? This took many flavors, from whether Google’s Android matters to whether mobile applications are “dead.”? My summary opinions on this broad topic are: a) the benefits of “openness” are easy to explain to 3rd party developers, but hard to explain to customers, b) generally what people (developers and customers) want isn’t “openness” but rather “freedom” where freedom means “not having to ask permission.”? Opening things that the industry has traditionally locked down is one aspect of providing greater freedom.? Clearly this is well aligned with Sprint’s traditional position (e.g. developers generally write first for Sprint because it’s easier, then move to other carriers) and our announced go-forward plans.

The other panel that I really enjoyed was the Internet and Web Services panel on “The Web as Platform: How Cloud Computing Will Change the Software Industry.”? The panel was moderated by Jeff Barr, Senior Web Services Evangelist for Amazon and included Alex Chan, Director of the Connected Systems Division at Microsoft, Ramon Estopina, Strategy Director for BT, Adam Gross, VP of Platform and Developer Marketing for Salesforce.com, Jonathan Rochelle founder of the company that became Google Spreadsheets and Senior Product Manager at Google, and Rick Treitman, founder of Virtual Ubiquity which Adobe acquired.? Rick continues to oversee development of the Buzzword product for Adobe.

My key reflection from this panel was that in 1995 I founded an Internet startup, had to buy a $20,000 Sun server and pay $1000 a month for T1 access to the Internet.? In 2001 I founded another Internet startup, bought a $2000 Sun Internet appliance and payed $100 a month for business DSL.? Today I continue to launch Internet-based projects (because I love it) but today I’m using Google Apps (for free) to set up the basic infrastructure, and am beginning to mess around with Amazon Web Services for a very scalable and affordable solution instead of a server or traditional hosting.? My how the world has changed in a baker’s dozen years!

Special thanks to Josh Wais for inviting me to participate!

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Now playing: Matthew Smith – None Among

Last month, we had a book signing on the Sprint Nextel campus in Reston. We just received the pictures. Thanks everyone for turning out and for the great dialog about how Mobility is revolutionizing everything!

Here are a couple of pictures from a book signing today on the Sprint Nextel campus in Overland Park, Kansas. Thanks to everyone who came and thanks Rebecca and Deanna for all your work making the event a success!

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Now playing: Mark Heard – Eye Of The Storm

Yesterday I was the keynote speaker at Anyware University, an event hosted by Anyware Mobility Solutions in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It was a good day on many fronts.

I spent 15 years in Tulsa before joining Sprint and many of the personal stories I tell in The Power of Mobility actually happened in Tulsa (the Word Processing window, the CEO who called the Internet a toy that businesses would never pay for, working with Pennwell Publishing to digitize and connect their magazine content, etc.), so it was a bit of a homecoming.

Also, Clint Parr, CEO of Anyware, was one of the first hires into Digital Frontiers, the Internet company I started in 1995, Chris Kingham, VP of marketing for Anyware, was our main contact at Pennwell in those days, and Jim Dutton, SVP and CFO for Anyware, was the head of business development that we worked with in selling Digital Frontiers when we sold the company to Williams and I went on to work with him on a number of M&A deals while I was with Williams.

Of course Sport Clips, an Anyware client, is one of the case studies in the book. I also had a chance to personally connect with Sprint’s sales team in Tulsa, including Sam Sibala, another old contact from my heady Internet boom days in Tulsa.

But the best aspect of the day was having a great gathering of smart folks who deeply care about keeping their companies and organizations on the right technology path and who specifically came to learn about what mobility can do for (or to) their businesses. The Q&A session was one of the best I’ve been part of in months – with well directed questions that really got to the heart of how this technology will impact the decisions these businesses are making today.

There were two other notable presentations at the event.

One was the presentation of money, which is always notable! Anyware sponsored a contest for University of Tulsa students to identify a business need, design a mobile solution to meet that need, and then develop the solution using Anyware’s development tools. The grand prize went to a team that developed a solution for campus housing and the second prize went to a team that developed an application for social workers to file documentation required for government funding. (Winners also received autographed copies of my book, but I’m guessing that students get more excited about money than yet another book to read. )

The second notable presentation was by Mike Ishmael, Anyware’s VP of Sales. Mike introduced four different levels of capturing the power of mobility:

1. Productivity – such as mobile e-mail and mobile calendars
2. Information – gathering and distributing information via mobile devices
3. Transaction – performing tasks in the field with mobility
4. Transformation – redefining how a business or industry competes through mobility

Mike also gave examples of Anyware clients in each of these categories. Two of his examples were particularly interesting to me.

CH2M Hill is “a global leader in full-service engineering, consulting, construction, and operations.” FEMA engaged the firm to manage providing some of the temporary housing to those displaced by Hurricane Katrina. While some of the other temporary housing projects turned into PR disasters, CH2M Hill wasn’t one of them. In fact, their successful management of the effort so pleased FEMA that it led to additional contracts with the government agency. Anyware helped CH2M Hill develop a mobile application for the post-disaster temporary housing developments – including asset tracking, recording of utilities and sewage facilities to ensure reliable and safe service are available, and ongoing management of the developments.

Mike’s second example was docvia.com – a web-based “solution that saves patients time and money while allowing physicians to offer better face-to-face care for new and existing patients.” Anyware helped docvia.com take their service mobile. Mike gave the example of a family out-of-town for a kid’s sports tournament who needs to ask the nurse a question or have a prescription sent to a nearby pharmacy. Docvia.com is a great example of a company using IP and Mobility to reinvent an industry!

I think the whole day gave attendees a lot to think about as they figure out how mobility can transform their businesses and their industries.

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Now playing: Andrew Peterson – All Shall Be Well

Last week we had a reception on the Sprint campus to thank all the local folks who have helped make The Power of Mobility a success. Thanks again to everyone!

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Now playing: John Waller – Breathe On Me