Basically I gathered the one liners I liked and can relate to. So here they come in no particular order:

- Dan Sifry
“there’s got to be a better way!”. Own comment: This has to be the best mantra an entrepreneur can have

- Hans Roslling
“Students have the world view relating to the birth year of their teacher.”
“The world is not globalising it is modernising.”
“The vikings were the al-Quaida of their times. Ask the Irish.”

- Lena K Samuelson
“ Live the life of your target group”.
“It is not about being someone else. It is about being a better version of yourself.”

-You will fuck up!
-Risk = Reward
-Therefore risk is key
-People is everything
-Network is key – that’s how the world work
-Passion is key.

Join Morten on the ride at lundxy.com

Another cool cross-over was Nöjesguiden’s (the What’s On of Sweden. Free printed paper and website) work with Belysio. It is a mobile application you download to your phone and then on the Nöjesguiden web page your friends can track your whereabouts and see them on a map in realtime. Another cool way to make mobile bridge the digital and real world.

I think location based services and features in existing services that are using location information is rapidly moving from hype to must-have status. The mobile phone is in many ways such a poor user interface that we need to pick up on the unique and very defendable competitive advantages it has. The fact that the mobile is always with us and the better and cheaper access to location data now is one such feature we need to build upon. Thanks Belysio for a great service!

I am also looking forward to the workshop I am invited to at Vodafone that will discuss these matters. And more so how Vodafone can be an enabler by opening up APIs to the unique information and functions they have at a network level. This would create an explosion in new services. On top of that mobile operators would have made huge profits on mobile content already, without big costly internal “media and entertainment wannabe” departments. Opening up to their unique functions and making the mobile billing option affordable we will have a very different mobile entertainment and apps world very soon. It has nothing to do with mobile. It is pure business sense – few mechants can afford 50% in transaction costs for the sale of their service or product. You have seen my standpoint on this abuse of the billing monopoly before. See this post for example.

Again, Gapminder is a seriously cool way to make a hell of a lot of sense of a hell of a lot of data. And it often provides the facts to change peoples mindsets as well. Pure. Raw. Powerful. Read more about Hans Rosling’s presentation here

Then there were all the cool people that I just had a ball hanging out with over the two days. You know who you are and thanks for interesting meetings!

Overall impression: Very professional production. Beats most things I have been to in Europe and the US. But a nice wrapping is not enough. To give you a hint, check out the great clips produced by Radon here. What about the content?

The high: Hans Rosling, professor of International Health at Karolinska Institutet (KI) but also the father of Gapminder, a program that helps us get a fact based view of the world. Professor Rosling is a presenter par excellence. Catch a glimpse here at his performance at the TED conference. The take away: The world is not globalising, it is modernising. We are all converging in terms of life expectancy, income, health etc. So, yes there is convergence -
1. but not for the last billion who still live on 1 USD per day or less. But they can be given help if we pull together.
2. but it is not sustainable currently. The average US citizen emits 20 tonnes of carbon dioxide. The same number for the Chinese is 3 tonnes per capita. And in this reality the US is allocating 300 bn USD to grandpa in pensions and health care whereas only 3 bn USD to grandskids, i.e. R&D in clean tech and energy saving technologies. This has to change!
3. but there is not one power – we are entering a multi- power world

Another high was Tom Crampton and Dan Dubno talking about how politics will change with the Internet and new media strategies and tools that the Obama campaign unleashed.  I will discuss this in a separate post since it has a huge bearing on mobile web.

The low: The advanced presentation technology and system was messing up a few times and there were a good few short and shallow presentations about things we already know and hear daily wince we work in the industry. But then again, whatever the event, the real value is the meeting place it is and the opportunity to meet people. It is more up to yourself than the event organisers really is my feeling.

Well, it would not be fair not to mention Mia Rose and her fairytale story that we will see more of in the music industry I think. From home video on YouTube to signing with Universal Music. Her humble approach and choice of wording calling her followers supporters rather than fans. Ace of Base, the hit selling Swedish pop music machine from the 90’s, is attempting a comeback 2.0 style. New website where fans can remix tracks. The most popular ones will be recorded by Ace of Base and put on coming albums. That’s participation, or in the words of Ulf Ekberg, “the fans are the fourth band member”.

Well, no mobile so far. I will come to that in the coming posts. I will try to structure a story around this and serve up in some logic clusters.

Now I need to soak in a bath and have a cold beer to chill down my brain that is near overheating after all meetings and the inspirational kick SIME08 gave me.

For direct reporting and info please go to the SIME08 blog and have a look. For excellent coverage in Swedish (and also broader than my niche focus on mobile) go to Disruptive.