Tag: london

Conference season: Where I will be…

Yes, conference season is firmly upon us and, before I descend into the mayhem that tends to come with it, let me tell you where you can find me over the next couple of weeks.

This week sees London at the centre of a lot of things gaming: the Mobile Games Forum opens its doors on Wednesday in the Hilton Tower Bridge in SW1, which combines with the Social Games Forum. I will be speaking on a panel on “How to engage cross-promotion for social game discovery”.

There is also ICE in town but not the freezing variety but the big gaming (as in proper gaming for money and such) expo over at Earl’s Court, which rolls a variety of gaming-related tracks into this. I will be speaking on a panel on their mobile gaming track with the concise title “Incorporate Social and Mobile to create the Ultimate Modern Gaming Experience”.

Only a little later, on 7/8 February, we will be in Amsterdam for BlackBerry DevCon Europe. It is well worth coming to this to get a glimpse of the “new” BlackBerry and our plans there [disclosure: I work for BlackBerry]. Sign up here and hit me if you are a developer; I have a few discount codes left. I will lead a breakout session on Social Gaming with Scoreloop there.

Onwards to my old stomping grounds in Hamburg from there for the annual European edition of Casual Connect where I will deliver a talk on how BlackBerry will deliver on gaming (yes, you read that right!).

After that, there is a two week (conference) break before heading to Barcelona for the monster that is Mobile World Congress. I’ll be there all week!

Barely a weekend’s rest and the Game Developers Conference (or GDC) opens its doors at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. Again, it’ll be a full week for me there.

I hope I will meet you at one of those. Sorry that Asia isn’t featuring in this tour de force this time but, hey, it’s still early in the year, huh? 😉

Image credit: http://gapingvoid.com

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Hailo (@hailocab) rocks!

Every now and then something comes and just delivers. These moments feel awesome, don’t they? I had one such experience today, so let me share it. Hailo (Crunchbase profile here) solves one of the world’s (well, for the time being, London’s) little problems, namely to hail a cab. You either stand around waving futiley around only to have people being picked up left, right and center (but never you) or you fiddle with phone numbers and hope they’re not busy, etc, etc.

Hailo is the self-proclaimed Taxi Heaven. And you know what? They certainly delivered. Here’s how it works: (1) get their app (for the time being available on iOS and Android). (2) fire up the app, it locates you and tells you how long you’d have to wait (6 minutes in my case). (3) press a button to “hail” the cab and you’re done.

The app keeps you up to date with progress (tour confirmed, updating ETA, etc). You can call the cabbie (who is provided to you by name) if you want, too. You can choose to pay with cash or by card (you can store your credit card in your profile and even add tips automatically). You take your ride. You pay. And if all that wasn’t enough, they even send you a receipt by e-mail.

It works like a poem. B-e-a-utiful! I am a sucker for betas but as you know (if you are equally inclined) that often causes frustration, too, because, well, it’s bloody beta. If what Hailo delivered is beta (and they’re early!), then their “gold” release will have you sinking to your knees.

Hailo is approved by TfL (Transport for London, the city’s transport regulator) and works (only) with “black cabs” (they are the nice, iconic official ones). For the drivers, they seem to be trying to make it easy AND add functionality: no hardware, no subscriptions, no exclusivity. Additionally, they use the drivers’ app (different to what me mere mortal uses) to spread word on traffic, status of any taxi ranks (100 cabs waiting for customers? Go somewhere else…).

Hailo, you guys rock!

Conference: Games For Brands

A fairly wonderful conference will open its doors on 27 October in London, UK, namely Games for Brands, an event where we will do just that: investigate if and to what extent games may work for brands. Just speak to Barclaycard (their Waterslide Extreme game [done by Fishlabs] did more than 14m downloads on iOS) or Volkswagen (multiple games by Fishlabs [again]) for the Polo and others and a special VW Golf GTI edition of Real Racing by the recently acquired Firemint).

The event features a fairly cool line-up, too, including speakers from:

  • Rovio (they of Angry Birds fame)
  • Channel 4
  • Google
  • PlayGen
  • BBC
  • EMI
  • King.com
  • LoveFilm.com
  • Tate
  • Wellcome Trust (yes, they’re the Glaxo Wellcome guys)
  • Aegon
  • Matmi (they did games and apps for instance for Lily Allen, Gorillaz, United.com and Vimto – the seriously mixed-up fruit)
  • and, yes, I will be talking again, too (but when don’t I?)

I also have a goodie for the readers of this blog: four of you can get a very special discount and attend for £95.00 only. Tempted? Contact me (either via e-mail or Twitter or through the contact form here).

It’ll be a good one, so come along! 🙂

Where Next?

First of all, a wonderful, inspiring, innovative, exciting and successful 2011 to you all!

With lots of conferences (and corresponding travel) coming up, I thought I’d let you know where you will find me in the next few weeks:

The list will certainly fill up some more really soon but, so far, that is some of the confirmed bits. Oh, and I plan a week of skiing in Andorra… 😉 So if you want to catch up, learn more about Scoreloop or just connect, give me a shout.

And, apparently if you are so inclined, this year you shouldn’t forget to follow the (white) rabbit!

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