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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