Updates: March 20 & 21, 2010: this post now includes Dominic Pride's presentation, embedded below. I also just added the audio version of my presentation (sorry for the rather poor quality), and the video of my presentation, below; please note that this is the 'unofficial version', recorded with my Kodak Zi8 - better quality video to follow soon.
Below is the link to the PDF with my edited presentation from today's Books 2.0 event at Olswang in London. I will add the slideshare embed code and file download options later, today (very slow connection here at the Hilton;), and we will have Clive's and Dominic's slides available as well; videos should follow within a few days, too. This was a really inspiring event, a great and very clued-in audience, beautiful location (Olswang London), and a perfect combination of different view-points by the 3 of us. More comments are available via the Twitter stream and via #books20 hashtag.
Some of the topics I covered included: the toxic assumptions of the music industry and what book publishers could learn from them, the reality of upside-down consumers (digital access first), the ecology of selling access vs selling copies, the Napster-Moment in eBooks - and what to do about (or rather, with) it, the characteristics of 'Reading 2.0', the new definition of books, media as a service and the potentials of 'content in the cloud', the future role of publishers... and much more. 32MB PDF: files.me.com/gleonhard/824xup (Creative Commons non-commercial, attribution licensed, as always)
Everyone in the content industry should watch this demo, below, of what the Wired guys are working on - it's fantastic food for thought; exciting stuff. And just gotta love Scott's Matrix-dude-like, gravely voice in beginning;). Well done, guys.
4 'IF' comments: 1) If the publishers can and will provide very addictive, immersive and interactive experiences at LITERALLY no-brainer prices or via bundled services (big 'if' here) 2) If the media companies and 'rights-holders' decide to get rid of all that crippling and legitimate user-insulting DRM and other technical protection models (remember, Protection is in the Business Model) 3) If the advertisers and brands are really going to fast-track their support for these kinds of new platforms 4) If everybody can finally resist the temptation to make this yet another 'walled garden' competition, albeit with prettier flowers....THEN indeed, we just may have something here. I'll be watching (+).
Fellow mobilist and DotOpen Founder Rudy de Waele has drummed up some great predictions, bottom-lines and other assorted wisdoms from 20+ really great people (including myself...for some odd reason; in any case I am really delighted to be asked to contribute - thanks Rudy!), asking us to provide input on out top 5 mobile trends for the next decade.
This effort produced a very nice slideshow that really packs a punch, see below. It includes some serious nuggets of wisdom from people such as Howard Rheingold, Douglas Rushkoff, Marshall Kirkpatrick, Gerd Leonhard,
Timo Arnall, Carlo Longino, Katrin Verclas, Atau Tanaka, Alan Moore,
Marek Pawloski, Ajit Jaokar, Nicolas Nova, Inma Martinez, Tony Fish,
Jonathan MacDonald, Willem Boijens, Carlos Domingo, Russ McGuire, Raimo
van der Klein, Michael Breidenbruecker, Robert Rice, Steve O’Hear, Ted
Morgan, Martin Duval, Andreas Constantinou, Fabien Girardin, Matthäus
Krzykowski, Rich Wong, Andy Abramson, Ilja Laurs, David Wood, Stefan
Constantinescu, Henri Moissinac, Kevin C. Tofel, Enrique C. Ortiz,
Felix Petersen, Tom Hume...
Here is my stuff, excerpted (from slide #9)
1. Mobile advertising will surpass the decidedly outmoded Web1.0 & computer-centric advertising - and ads will become content, almost entirely. Advertisers will, within 2-5 years, massively convert to mobile, location-aware, targeted, opt-ed-in, social and user-distributed 'ads'; from 1% of their their budgets to at least 1/3 of their total advertising budget. Advertising becomes 'ContVertising' - and Google's revenues will be 10x of what they are today, in 5 years, driven by mobile, and by video.
2. Tablet devices will become the way many of us will 'read' magazines, books, newspapers and even 'attend' live concerts, conferences and events. The much-speculated Apple iPad will kick this off but every major device maker will copy their new tablet within 18 months. In addition, tablets will kick off the era of mobile augmented reality. This will be a huge boon to the content industries, worldwide - but only if they can drop their mad content protection schemes, and slash the prices in return for a much larger user base.
3. Many makers of simple smart phones - probably starting with Nokia- will make their devices available for free - but will take a small cut (similar to the current credit-cards) from all transactions that are done through the devices, e.g. banking, small purchases, on-demand content etc. Mobile phones become wallets, banks and ATMs.
4. Quite a few mobile phones will not run on any particular networks, i.e. without [I mean unlocked] SIM cards. The likes of Google (Nexus), and maybe Skype, LG or Amazon will offer mobile phones that [may eventually] will work only on Wifi / WiMax, LTE or mashed-access networks, and will offer more or less free calls. This will finally wake up the mobile network operators, and force them to really move up the food-chain - into content and the provision of 'experiences'
5. Content will be bundled into mobile service contracts, starting with music, i.e. once your mobile phone / computer is online, much of the use of the content (downloaded or streamed) will be included. Bundles and flat-rates - many of them Advertising 2.0-supported - will become the primary way of consuming, and interacting with content. First music, then books, new and magazines, then film & TV.
One of my favorite musicians (and fellow Berklee guitarist) John Mayer has recently launched a new site that makes very interesting use of augmented reality concepts. All you need to do is allow the flash player access to your web-cam, print out a single page with the control icon, and follow the instructions. I liked it so much I made a short video about the experience - this kind of thing will be big, no doubt; in fact, I think it will be one of those key 'new generatives' that could well be offered in premium packages going forward... stay tuned!
Wired has a related video that shows how John made the material used for this