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In this blog, I outline two EC initiatives that I follow with interest: A whitepaper on ICT standardization and a proposal to deem software makers liable for code

At the talkstandards event(see previous blog), there was an interesting talk by Anne Lehouck, Principal Administrator, EC principal administrator at European Commission. I must confess that it took me a bit by surprise since I did not expect the openness and detail in the content. So, this talk was very useful.

Anne Lehouck talked of the European commission’s forthcoming white paper on ICT standardization.

The key points which I took from this talk are:

a) The commission is proposing a platform which will engage all stakeholders with the goal of facilitating coordination between the various bodies including vendors, users, SSOs. This is a policy platform, not a standards platform where the parties will come together to discuss the relationship between standards, industry and public needs.

b) IPR : FRAND will be the preference and compliance to Article 81 and Article 82 of European Competition Law will be important. Policies of standards bodies need to address the complex nature of the IP landscape. We need clear, transparent, flexible policies

c) An emphasis on Europe in light of the global scenario

d) Public procurement : Public agencies and government bodies should choose the best solution. The policy should be sufficiently flexible to allow procuring agencies to choose alternatives conforming to their existing systems.

My personal view is: The approach is pragmatic and its interesting to see what comes of it. In contrast, we have recent proposals like EC wants software makers held liable for code – which in my view are fundamentally unworkable and to make matters worse we are already seeing a mix of open source and non open source strategies. So, if we start making software makers liable for code – I am not clear how that fits in going forward

In any case, a discussion is needed and it’s a good thing

Hence, the whitepaper is a pragmatic approach forward but much remains to be seen

Background:

This blog is a summary of my discussion at the talkstandards forum last week in Brussels. I see both the talk and the event as the continuation of a debate – both online and offline.

After this talk, in an interview with talkstandards, I asked: ‘Can you standardise a painting?’ i.e. there must also be a place for innovation and by extension standards must seek balance as a communication medium and as an innovation medium.

Over the next few years, this debate will be increasingly relevant because of the following reasons (among others)

a) The recession which will make sweeping changes to the ecosystem

b) New paradigms like Cloud computing which change the emphasis of Open systems

c) There is an ongoing debate about standards, open source, Net neutrality, IPR and other issues in the EU and also in the USA. As I discuss below, we need to take a pragmatic view forward

Notes:

We need to innovate standards but not standardize innovation. We also need to avoid a ‘one size fits all’ standards

If we take a step back and address the problem from first principles,

What is the goal of open standards?

Consumers: Things work with each other (think power adapters at the simplest level)

Vendors: It is to ensure that a market develops for a specific technology

Break down the words Open and Standard

Open – ten meanings of Open(which means there is no ‘one’ meaning)

1) Open source

2) Open standards

3) Open APIs i.e. Application Programming Interfaces – for instance access to Location APIs

4) Open access (freedom to contact anyone on the network),

5) Open choice of enablers (for example – the ability to choose your billing system),

6) Data portability (ownership of your data)

7) The ability to access any application (i.e. not just the provider’s application) a.k.a the classic ‘Walled Garden’ debate – On deck/ Off deck
‘Open’ in relationship to the Cloud

9) Impact on developers and a shift in value to the edge of the network

10) Low barriers of entry for third party developers

Some contradictions of ‘Open’

a) Facebook more open or myspace more open – facebook original open API. My space – you can contact anyone

b) Opera – Open standards – not open source

c) Most operators are opening up(not having portals) but banning skype

d) Skype is proprietary technology(not open source) but wants networks to open up(wants open access)

e) Android uses Open source but (still unlike the iPhone) forces you to use Operator billing

f) The iPhone is a closed system but still favoured by developers since barriers to entry for third party developers are greater.iPhone has led to the greatest innovations in the mobile value chain in the last few years

g) Open source has liberal licensing models but strict governance models

h) Competitive positioning: Eclipse v.s. Sun

i) What happens when Oracle acquires Sun(which acquired MySQL – an open source database)

Standards

Standards argument is accepted for consumer electronics: for fax machines

It also applies to lower level web based protocols like http

We need to distinguish between standards for communication systems and standards for application systems

For instance, we all agree that http should be a common paradigm else the Web would not have taken off

However, this gets more complex with things like HTML5(which include offline browsing)

Presumably aiming for 2012 to be completed! -

Meanwhile implementations will exist

This brings me to the core of the argument that

a) We cannot standardise innovation(i.e. the standards should be mainly oriented towards simple communication based technologies and higher levels of the stack will focus more on innovation

b) We need to innovate standards – since there are so many interpretations of Open and standard(as the IDC doc points out) that we need to go back to first principles and look at why we need standards in the first place i.e. for communication so that a market

develops(avoid one size fits all standards – i.e. standardize standards)

This gets more complex in the Internet of services(cloud computing)

Considering the emphasis on Web standards, there are three facets to the Web:

a) As an Internet of people(person to person communication mechanism)

b) As an Internet of Content and

c) As an Internet of services(Cloud computing)

So far, the Web has largely been about the (a) Internet of people and (b) Internet of Content. The future will be also largely dominated by the Internet of services(c) i.e. Cloud computing

In that case, the emphasis of standards changes i.e. the purest case of standards(interoperability) is ‘process level interoperability’ i.e. Amazon’s cloud should be able to invoke a process on Google’s cloud

I don’t think that will happen(and the most ‘open’ vendors make no claim that it will)

So, then data level interoperability will become more important(I think)

In any case, the future of standards will be far more complex .. and this is the start of a debate

Mobile 2.0 event is announced. More details below. A great lineup of speakers and a forum for startups.

——-

Announcing Mobile 2.0 Europe : a two-day event on June 18-19, 2009 in Barcelona exploring the emerging Mobile Ecosystem and Disruptive Mobile Innovation, presented by dotopen and the Mobile 2.0 Organizing Committee.

After 3 events in San Francisco and a successful Mobile 2.0 Europe event in Barcelona last year we decided to make this 5th official Mobile 2.0 conference a 2-day event:

A Developers’ Day on June 18 in Barcelona Activa, a day for developers in mobile & web convergent area’s exploring the mobile ecosystem and the Mobile 2.0 Europe conference on June 19 at at the Espacio ESADE FORUM, a day to explore future visions on mobile and beyond.

At Mobile 2.0 Europe, we will explore the next big leaps of innovation in mobile for the coming years. Six main themes will be covered during this edition: Openness, Beyond Free, Play, Cloud, Context and Sense.

Each section, eventually combined will have about an hour including a keynote or visionary talk on this topic, followed by a panel discussion by C-level industry experts from major European Operators, Venture Capital, Device Manufacturers, Startups, and Application or Service Providers.

Currently confirmed speakers:

Marko Ahtisaari – CEO of Dopplr.

Tommy Ahlers, Founder of Zyb, now Head of LBS at Vodafone / CEO at Wayfinder Systems.

Andrew Berglund – Global Interactive Creative Director at Cheil Communications.

Xavier Carrillo Costa – CEO / Founder Digital Legends Entertainment.

Andreas Constantinou, Ph.D. – Research Director at VisionMobile

Regine Debatty – we-make-money-not-art.com.

Dr. Lai Kok Fung – Chief Executive Officer, Co-Founder BuzzCity.

Tom Hume – Managing Director of Future Platforms.

Matthaus Krzykowski – Mobile Correspondent, VentureBeat.

Brian LeRoux – PhoneGap and Nitobi.

Inma Martinez – Digital Media Strategist and Investment Advisor at Stradbroke.

Charles McCathieNevile – Chief Standards Officer at Opera Software.

Dr. Maximilian Niederhofer, Associate, Atlas Venture.

Pat Phelan – founder and President of Cubic Telecom (MAXroam).

Priya Prakash – Designer of Tools, Conversations & Experiences.

Tom Raftery is lead analyst of GreenMonk, the Energy and Sustainability practice of industry analyst firm RedMonk.

Gustav Soderstrom, Director of Portable Solutions, Spotify.

Prof. Atau Tanaka – Chair of Digital Media, Acting Director of Culture Lab.

Andrea Trasatti – Director, Technology strategy at mTLD dotMobi.

Katrin Verclas – Co-Founder and Editor at MobileActive.org

More C-level speakers from the European mobile ecosystem (operators, handset manufacturers, VC’s, startups, applications and service providers) are confirmed every day now, so stay tuned on our website for updates.

We’ll also have some startup demo presentations of some new and innovative startups active in the themes we’ll be covering. You can register your startup here, it’s FREE!

Early bird tickets can now be ordered at http://www.amiando.com/mobile2europe2009.html

I have followed MEP James Elles’s thinking from the EIF in the European Parliament – and it’s great to see that he has his own blog on policy and long term trends.

James talks of a range of issues in his blog covering both politics and policy and especially covering long term trends.

In his inaugural blog, Future Trends: When will Europe get its act together? - he contrasts the long range thinking of the Americans as outlined in the U.S. National Intelligence Council’s (NIC) “Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World” report with the lack of similar initiatives here in Europe(and notes that the Chinese government also have similar thinking in place)

James says ..

I find it astonishing that we have so little fundamental appraisal of long-term trends when the EU takes decisions, for example on climate change, establishing the goal of reducing carbon emissions by 20% by 2020, relying on international evidence but having no independent process to assess information for itself.

Might it not be a good idea to create something similar in the EU, as exists in the US, to get a clearer idea of what the EU might expect in the future?

I expect that knowing James’s background and detailed knowledge of transatlantic policy issues, this will be an important blog to follow – both for policy and politics.

We in the UK have been seeing a flood of stories about expense claims from MPs

One thing strikes me as odd: Until last year, MPs could claim £250 of expenses with no receipts and even now its £25.

So, does that apply to everyone?

Keeping track of receipts (especially multi-currency ones) is a big hassle and a vast majority of them are indeed under £25

Very odd ..

Not withstanding outright questionable expenses

They included Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, who claimed thousands of pounds for refurbishing her family home in her constituency, claiming her “main” home was a spare bedroom in her sister’s house in London.

Though not a Telegraph reader, for once this is a good development and as long as the coverage is cross party – I think it is a good job from the Telegraph since its in the public interest

Next week, I am speaking at the ipcom 2009 conference in Lisbon.

We have special discounted codes for this conference.

If you use a code of IP09LXAJI you can get a discounted rate as per below:

Conference only ticket (May 13-14): Eur 300 only – instead of the regular fee of Eur. 890

OR

Workshop + Conference only ticket (May 12-14): Eur 500 only – instead of the regular fee of Eur. 1240

kind rgds

Ajit

Marek Pawlowski hosts the 2009 MEX conference in London this month.

The conference is based on the an agenda as per below

User interface design is key to leadership in application stores

Achieving great tactile experience is a subtle art

Customer research methodology must be enhanced to close the reality gap

Changing economics will facilitate increased diversity in handset portfolios

Investment in input and display modalities must increase

The next billion customers are already here

The delicate art of balancing commercial imperative and user experience

Location data forms an integral part of user experience

Marek seeks feedback on the agenda which you can download from the conference site as per the link above. I have not yet attended MEX but it is a well known User experience conference in London and I recommend you to have a look

Govloop, facebook for the feds, reaches 10,000 members in less than a year. You can see the full press release HERE

Steve is a good friend and also a collaborator for the policy bloggers network – and I am helping to promote Govloop in Europe. So, its great to see Govloop do so well in such a short time

I blogged about the execution of Delara Darabi.

I also twittered the same

A quick search of ‘Delara’ on twitter shows that many other people have done the same

This is interesting for me since I would like to know these people since clearly we share common values.

So, I wonder if there is some way for twitter to create ad hoc communities around an issue?

This would be great since I would like to easily follow people who tweeted about the issue.

My only concern is marketers will get hold of this .. which is sad .. since my goal is simply to communicate with people who share the same values ..

Does this functionality exist? Maybe Twitter should create it?