Event Information

Content on the Move: Challenges and Opportunities for Mobile Content

Date: 25 October 2006   Drinks: 18:30   Talk Starts: 19:30 OPuS Event

Review - Post Event

This event proved to be a very interesting evening, and was well attended. We had three speakers at the cutting edge of educational applications for mobile devices.

Henrik Andersson, who is himself a medical doctor, founded Medhand International in 2001 and is now the CEO. Medhand is a technology company specialising in mobile information for medics. Their main product is the “Dr Companion”, which is the largest mobile library available for PDAs. Henrik kicked off the evening by talking about what is the best kind of material to be used on mobile devices, and why.

Henrik traced the history of mobile content via publishing and computing. Hand-held computers are more powerful than the computers which sent man to the moon. Henrik talked of the low recall rates for material viewed on computer, and explained that ready-reference content is ideal for hand-held use at the point of need (in his case, hospital doctors checking dosages and the like). He shared his vision for the future, with content increasingly being created for mobile use, rather than book content being squeezed on as best it can.

Richard Arnold of StreetAccess followed on. After a long career in IT, in 2004 Richard joined with John Fisher, one of the founders of the Rough Guides, and Kevin Wright, a long time Art and Design advisory teacher and inspector, to form StreetAccess to explore the possibility of using IT to take learning out of the classroom. Richard described the experiences of StreetAccess and their products, and their work in the educational sector. He sees mobile content as being yet another facet of the learning experience, alongside books rather than replacing them. Some whole towns and cities in the UK are getting "wired up", with whole school systems being given devices and training.

David Hockin the corporate Director of Cimex, a digital media agency specialising in all areas of convergent media communications, concluded the evening. Current projects include: - Directgov mobile – making government services available to citizens, anywhere - Yahoo 360 – Social networking for Young people - NHS Direct - Information, advice and guidance (IAG) health portal David described their experience of putting very rich informational and guidance content onto i-Mode in the "need to know" mobile portal. He emphasised the importance of search on small devices, and prophesies that mobile access will be bigger than Internet use in the not-too-distant future.

There was plenty of time for lively discussion. This was the first event on mobile content which OPUS has held, but it looks certain to be followed by more.

Description

Hear about the growing global market for mobile content and publishing

Mobile content is already big business, with the UK market for ringtones, music, and entertainment well into the £100 millions, and the market still growing at almost 8% last year. One of the key growth areas in the 2006/2007 to 2010/2011 period is expected to be mobile broadband services and mobile content generally. Where does educational content fit into this trend? Will users expect to read, research, and relax using their mobile devices - and what does the publishing community need to do to position itself to meet the demand?

Three professionals working in the burgeoning mobile content sphere will be speaking about their experiences to date and visions for the future. This will be an interesting event on a topic of interest to many publishers around Oxford.

The event will be preceded by a brief OPuS AGM.

Speakers

Richard Arnold — Technical Director, i-Guide

Henrik Andersson — MD/BA Physician Founder and CEO of Medhand International

David Hockin — Corporate Director