So the great Google mobile announcement happened on the run up to our Dallas Management World event. Clearly they held back the presses to give us the scoop on their Android program! At the same time, our friends at Apple have crossed the Atlantic to unleash the iPhone on the UK. A nation awaits!
Both themes were much in evidence at our annual Management World Americas bash in Dallas last week. The event has been getting bigger year on year since its low point just one month after 9/11 and for the first time in a long while, the show had a similar upbeat buzz to match our big global conference in Nice. Whether this was the joy of having iPhones in their pockets or the thought of being able to Google from a mobile phone I’m not sure, but it was certainly there. But then, this year is the first time in a long time that some major merger or acquisition wasn’t underway, so maybe people felt it was safe to leave the office for a few days in the chance that their desk might still be there when they got back!
But I’d like to think that a lot of the buzz had to do with some of the new things we have launched in the Forum over the past few months. Many of these saw the light of day at Dallas. First was the great success of the Content Encounter – the Forum’s vehicle for opening up the issues surrounding managing content from end to end. A consortium of players – Microsoft, AT&T, IBM, Alcatel-Lucent Cognizant; BEA Motorola and media company Westwood One invested a seven figure sum with TM Forum to bring the Content Encounter Showcase to life as a ‘super-catalyst’ project. Its five year mission; to boldly go where no consortium has gone before; to seek out new management challenges; to engage with new creatures from other industry sectors; to highlight the art of the possible and at the same time pragmatically to forge the basis of some new industry agreements.
Situated in its own purpose built set as a part of the Forum’s ‘Forumville’ showcase, the Content Encounter allowed customers to see the whole content lifecycle from studio through to the seamless handoff onto multiple devices and mixing media with various innovative bits of merchandising and promotional tie-ins. It was certainly life Jim, but definitely not as we know it!
Another launch at Dallas was a new group aimed at forging a universal approach to managing devices. With over 1 trillion of them expected to litter the universe in the next 15-20 years, having a common way of managing these increasingly diverse and multi-functional beasties is going to be essential otherwise we will have to leave it to end users to cope with all of their funny little ways. When all the user wants to do is to use the thing rather than worrying about setting it up and integrating it with the service, a common management approach seems to be a must in an “any content, anywhere, anytime” world. To bring the device issue into focus, Blackberry CIO, Robin Bienfait gave an interesting keynote on day one. More on this by clicking here
Other big news from the show was the rapid involvement of the cable sector in the Forum’s work. Fourteen cable companies have joined the Forum over the past few months and a special cable interest group has been formed. Time Warner Cable led one of the catalyst projects at the show and their board member and CTO, Mike Lajoie, also keynoted.
But of course the oil- tanker sized job of turning the telecom industry into a lean and mean butterfly goes on and much of the conference was focussed on the less glamorous but equally interesting transformation of the Telco. Kevin Salvadori of Canadian innovator Telus gave a very clear object lesson in how to go about a transformation program. Quite what the Telco might turn into was the subject of a good panel debate between Phil Dance of BT, Mike Hill of IBM, Bhaskar Gorti from Oracle and Simon Torrance of the Telco 2.0 group. Simon also spoke at the well attended half-day Masterclass workshop called “Telco 2.0 – the movie” that also featured Colin Orviss, Rob Rich and yours truly.
To help the oil-tanker navigate, we also launched the first in a series of reports by the Forum’s business benchmarking team. This program allows service providers around the world to enter business data such as order-cash time cycles and allows comparison of their information with their peer group. The report was a synthesis of key trends observed over the past year and was produced in conjunction with industry analysts OSS Observer. You can get a free download of this report by clicking here
I must be getting old because I can’t ever remember getting so tired at a Management world event. My sleep wasn’t helped by the interesting plumbing at the Adams Mark Hotel which seemed to erupt at 2 am every morning, but it was just full–on meeting after meeting with members, press getting involved with sessions. And one or two beers it must be admitted!
So, the circus is off to Nice as usual next year but the plumbing at the Adams Mark has proven too much and so we will be in Orlando next year for MW Americas. Yes “Mickey does Management” is the theme for next year. Better than “Debbie does Dallas” I suppose!