R&D Summary - week 49

We're starting to get used to this weekly summary format. It's good as it forces you to both actually stop being lazy and start writing, and also it's a nice little review of what you've done.

So what's up? This:

Emil has been testing a few of our prototypes and got the usual user testing insight: the users know best. No matter how smart you think you've been. He's also been digging deeper in the avalanche of products and prototypes that are currently flooding the e-reading market. Time INC showed thoughts on Sports Illustrated, NYTimes released their Skimmer and there was some additional buzz about Qualcomm's initiative Mirasol.

Tagging onto that, Paulina had a visit from a few students from SSE that presented their thoughts on e-readers - interesting! (Although our efforts within this areas has caused some some slight confusion)

Paulina has also been reviewing how we communicate internally within Bonnier and came up with a few improving suggestions. To improve our own R&D communication we are active users of Yammer, Dropbox and now also have regular phone meetings over Skype. Works surprisingly well. Paulina stopped by a conference on rhetoric too which had good speakers, but a boring format.

Over here in Pacific Standard Time we have been to the excellent Supernova conference where we listened and spoke to interesting people such as Linda Stone, Umair Haque, Esther Dyson, John Hagel and JP Rangaswami. Sara's favorite was Alec Ross (Hillary Clinton's Advisor for Innovation) that closed the conference with Craig Newmark and Jimmy Wales. Myself, I'm a bit of a JP guy (as you know if you've followed me before).

Either way, the conference was an eye opener on the what things are taken for granted in certain circles, and the challenges of even getting the question on the agenda in others. No one was discussing whether open platforms and standards was the way to go or not, it was just a matter of how to use them. We also noted that we seemed to be the only media company present that wasn't covering the event. Slightly surprising, which a lot of the attendees noted to. A regular phrase was "what are YOU doing here?". These places aren't exactly spoiled with media company presence, apparently.

The media industry normally hang out in New York, which was where we spent the first few days of the week. We met up with Bonnier Corporation and talked through a few of our current projects.

Phew! What a week. And on this side of the world, it it's not even lunch yet. A few more meetings before settling into the weekend.