Emap's Mobinar: The Power of the Network in Your Pocket

Yesterday, I was honoured to host emap's Mobinar: The Power of the Network in Your Pocket .
We had a fantastic line up of speakers: global consultant and high-tech author Tomi Ahonen, Dave Springall (Yospace) and Mike Burgess from emap, Jonathan Macdonald from Blyk (on the day after Blyk launched) and myself on the whole network thing!
And contributing throughout the day we had Jon Williams from bmbagency.com

Everyone attending came because they wanted to. We were a self-formed community of interest - and boy did it show.

The afternoon workshop sessions were amazing. Perhaps they were driven by the commitment that one of these ideas would happen. As people created ideas, they took responsibility for them - we found champions who will help bring them life outside of the Mobinar.

Tomi is a whirlwind of an inspirational speaker and workshop leader. I heard only positive - and I mean really positive - reports about him from the small group attending.

Jonathan blew our minds with the fabulous engagement model that Blyk represents - leaving his audience in shock and awe.

I think I learned three things for a successful event of this kind:

1. Get people to attend who WANT to attend (ie, are not directed to attend)
2. Commit to a really solid output: If it's about ideas - commit to making one a reality.
3. Commit to a follow up. And mean it.

It goes without saying of course, get the right speakers on the right subject. Frankly I don't think I could have found better speakers if I'd scoured the planet with a budget of millions. A huge thank you to you all.

Now, this will all seem a bit esoteric if you weren't in the small group who attended (which was primarily emap people, but we made those silo walls a little permeable by inviting in 'outsiders').

The slides the event generated will be circulated to those who attended - and to those who indicated they had planned to but were let down by last minute circumstance. Can't share that with everyone here, for some pretty obvious IP reasons.

However, Tomi has been kind enough to say he's happy for me to share a video of his morning sessions so expect to find them on this blog soon, along with my own morning presentation.

Finally a giant thank you to every single person who attended. You were awesome.

Two posts you should check out for more. Tomi saw the 'guts' of Blyk for the first time at Mobinar, this is his blog response.

And this is his kind comments about the event.