UK WiFi Deconstructs Itself Further

A few weeks ago I wrote about the prospects for public WiFi in the UK market (here).  Its seems that in the face of adversity the players in the market have done something about it.  But was it a) collaborate to create on a proposition to beat 3G; or b) fracture the market further and weaken the proposition?

Well yes you guessed it they chose the latter - genius!!!

The UK has very few players in the WiFi market these days.  The two front runners are The Cloud and BT Openzone.  Which is great because they are allies and therefore present to customers a unified network footprint.  Coming in close behind them is T-Mobile.  Other than that Swisscom, Orange, Spectrum, Boingo are all in the market - but not in a substantial way.

So whilst the UK is the most competitive telecoms market in the world, there are few companies in the WiFi game, and they are working together so they should stand half a chance of presenting the customer a unified proposition.

Lets recap on the general market (this will be short).  3G data access is eating the lunch of the WiFi operators (no matter how much they deny it).  Their business traveller market is fast disappearing and its starting to heavily erode the new consumer market as well. If you want a long analysis read my reviousblog on the subject.

So what has happened to make this situation worse?  On Friday The Register reported that BT Openzone customers were being informed that as of Thursday this week they could no longer access The Cloud footprint.

Lets assume for sake of argument that it was equally both their faults - one wanted too much money and the other didn't want to pay enough.  However it happened its just decreased the likelyhood of public WiFi playing a significant role in the UK market.

Its true that users may notice very little difference in their coverage.  But BT you have just signalled to users that they cant get unified access to WiFi through the UK's biggest operator - that makes 3G so much more attractive to them, especially when 3G is cheaper and everywhere.  Cloud you have just lost your biggest visible partner to market and positioned yourself as tough to do business with.  Thats not a step forward.

The biggest problem for public WiFi is it isn't everywhere and 3G is. It just is not as convenient.  This latest event just magnifies that.  And its not as if WiFi is cheaper  - it isn't, its now significantly more expensive than cellular.  It doesn't offer massively better bandwidth in real world implementations either.

Retail public WiFi in the UK is heading south rapdily with this latest announcement.  WiFi will continue to make a significant contribution as a bundled part of a cellular tariff IF the operators can offer the MNO pricing that makes it cheaper to transit than their own network.

But unless a very different approach is taken, really fast, WiFi will not exist in a retail market for long.

Presentation tips - a bit random but might help someone...

A friend asked me for a few tips on presenting, so I jotted a few down.  I'm sure this will be useful to someone out there - sorry if its a bit random, it did it off the top of my head!

 

Planning the presentation

The top tip is don't use any slides at all - it takes a huge amount of confidence but if you can do it you will make an excellent presentation. People want to get engaged with you not a projector. But I think for a first time thats a pretty big ask so lets assume you want to do some.

don't do too many slides. Doing too many is a mistake as you will feel the slides are rushing you. You should have one slide for every 3-4 minutes of your presentation - but the longer your presentation is then the time between slide should reduce (otherwise people get bored).If you are doing a ten minute presentation 3 slides plus a title slide is enough. should be the absolute maximum. A 20 minute presentation should be 7-8 slides at the most. A 30 minute presentation can be 15 slides. Anything more than 30 minutes and you are getting into a whole different type of communication. I am assuming that is not the case for you so lets assume you have less than 30 minutes.

Each slide should not contain too much information. As a rule no more than 5 bullet points with no ore than 10 words per bullet. People want to hear what you have to say - don't put everything you are going to say on your slides - if you do why would they bother listening to you - you could just email it to them. Also if you put a lot on a slide the audience will start reading it as soon as it comes up. Often this means they will stop listening to you so they can read it.

You bullet points should read like sun headlines. A good sun headline bullet point is four or five words. So its impactful, says what it means but leaves the reader wanting/needing to hear more. That will make your audience listen to you.

A presentation should tell a story. A story has a start, middle and an end. The audience should feel like they are being taken on a journey. Start with what you are going to talk about - give the audience a heads up. You don't necessarily put this on the slide, you can say it. Then you want to set the scene, then give them the detail and then summarise.

Open a blank power point presentation and open as many slides as you are going to need. So lets say for example you are going to do 4 slides. Make a title slide and 4 empty slides. don't worry what they look like at this stage. Your first job is to work out the title of each slide. The titles should seem like they flow as part of a story and answer the comments/questions raised on the previous one.

Once you have done that jot your thoughts down as bullets on each one as to what that slide should contain. You will find that those notes will probably form the basis for the bullet points.

When writing the slides imagine yourself saying it. What do the audience want to know about - don't tell them crap they are not interested in. Will they understand it - don't confuse them, you may need to more explanatory if they are new to the subject. don't treat them like kids - nothing is worse than listening to someone talk about something you already know about, they are al professionals - tell them things they don't know.

Once you have the bullets on the page you need to make it look pretty. This helps people stay interested in what you are saying - especially if part of it is something they already know about. A slide coming up with four bullets and a picture is a lot more exciting than no picture. The image doesnt have to say anything, although it is good if it helps to explain something on the slide. It can just be an image of a document if you are talking about legal documents for example. It just adds a bit of visual interest.

Before the presentation

The best way to feel relaxed about your presentation is to be confident about the contents. Rehearse. Stand up in a room with your slides and rehearse. Pretend there is an audience there and go through your presentation five times. Say things out loud, even if you only whisper it - because it takes longer to talk than to talk in your mind. Time each presentation. Make sure that if you have 10 minutes your presentation only takes up to 7-8 minutes.

If you are really not confident write yourself an entire script of everything you will say. Then memorise it, and practice reading from it over and over again. This will make it more of a reaction than something you have to remember. When the words become second nature you can focus more on your delivery style.

Then take your script and boil it down to a few key sentences. This will act as a written prompt should you forget where you are while presenting. They should be different to your bullets - these points are what you are actually going to say rather than what they are going to read. Here is an example of how I would boil down one paragraph:

If this is what I am going to say "Hi there, I'm Owen Geddes. Over the next ten minutes I am going to talk to you about how wireless broadband is going to change the lives of millions of people in India India as a country has a huge population of over a billion people, that to a large extent are unconnected. However the country is growing through huge growth in economic terms, which has a knock on effect with communications. The country is leap frogging whole technologies and as a result is perfect for wireless broadband. It has only about 4 million broadband subscribers, but has over 150 million mobile users, of which over 40 million regularly access the Internet via their phone. The population has limited fixed infrastructure but there is a desire for connectivity. Laptop sales are increasing 100% year on year, with virtually all of them being WiFi enabled. With major cities housing tens of millions of people and densities of 20-50k people per square kilometer there is a clear case for wireless broadband."

This is the notes I would have to go with this:

• Billion people in India

• 4m broadband

• 150mmobile and 40m use Internet

• 20-50k people per sq km in cities

Get a set of notes written up - so the words are big. When you present you will be surprised how hard it is to read anything if you panic - everything seems too small and long. So make your notes short, big text and easy to understand. You will have these notes by your side when you present. They will be your comfort blanket if you don't feel confident at any point.

Making the presentation

Before you start remember people have come to listen because they are interested. They have not come to pick holes in anything you do. They have come to learn. The best thing you can do for them to make them happy is make it short and interesting. If its short they will love you.

You are going to want to be mobile when talking if possible. It helps if you are standard and you can move around a bit - it helps to loosen you up and makes you more interesting to look at. So find yourself a space when you start.

Don't rush. Its not a race - half the words at half the pace is appreciated. Nobody wants to have to struggle to keep pace with you. Remember you know what you are talking about but they might not. So make it simpler than you would normally and go at half the speed. Talk at a speed that you think is almost embarrassing. Go at the speed you in your mind makes you appear to be a retard. Believe me on the outside it will be just about right. A slow deliberate presentation comes over as very, very confident and relaxed.

Remember you are in control. When you have the stage you are king. You are the authority and you have the right to be talking. You control the audience. They will do as you tell them within reason. If you are lively they will be lively. If you are boring they will be boring. 95% of people don't want public confrontation. remember if someone asks a question they are not trying to be awkward, they just want to know. don't panic if they ask something. If you know the answer, tell them. If they don't tell them you find find out and let them know later. If someone is in any way confrontational just say "I understand your point. Its probably not for discussion here, lets discuss it together after the presentation". If they try and push any point after saying that they will appear unreasonable, selfish and to be disrupting the presentation and the audience will side with you, and often take action themselves to stop the person.

If you tell someone to shut up in that room (nicely of course) - 99 times out of 100 they will because you are in charge. They know the crowd will turn on them if they don't follow your very reasonable requests.

When speaking take breaks. Every now and then stop and take a deep breath. better still have a glass of water on the table. Every now and then stop and take a sip. This gives you a few seconds to organise things in your mind and plan what you will say next. It may seem like an eternity when you are doing it - the audience will not even notice you do it. If you forget what you were going to say next take a sip of your water, and then take a deep breath whilst looking at your notes and carry on.

Nobody will mind if you forget something for a second, stammer or get a word in the wrong order. Everybody sat there knows its hard standing up in front of people and most of them are glad you are there instead of them. As a result they have no problem if you stumble a bit - they wont hold it against you or laugh. nobody expects you to be perfect - you are not a trained public speaker.

Make sure you use your hands a lot - don't wave them around wildly but enough to look animated. In turn that will help your voice sounds animated. You don't want to sound monotone - you want to sound enthusiastic. Let your personality shine through. Be you not a robot. Use a little humor if you can. Its not unprofessional, and makes everybody relax and warm to you making your job easier. Heads of state do it, CEO's do it - its not unprofessional - its human, and that is key. Be a human being and people will like you. If they like you they will forgive anything to you say or any mistakes you make. Everybody by nature wants to be in a pack - in modern day this means having friends. When you are stood up in a room you are effectively head of the pack for a short period. therefore people really badly want to be your friend as that means security for them. remember that - they want to be your friend.

Be casual. Chances are you will be nervous which will make your appear stand-offish, up tight and not likable. Imagine you are in your jeans and t-shirt and the room is your friends after a couple of drinks. Just relax. don't worry about nerves by the way. The one thing that will make your presentation brilliant is the adrenaline surging because of nerves. It heightens your senses and allows your brain to operate much faster than normal. That helps.

After the first minute of talking allow yourself to enjoy the moment. You didn't get swallowed up and die, nobody laughed - its actually ok. So smile and enjoy.

At the start of the presentation just smile and say "hi everybody, I'm xxxxx from the xxxx team. In the next ten minutes or so I am going to tell you about x". you will feel immediately relaxed after just that. So will they.

Don't go too fast. If you do you will leave lots of bits out so not only will bit be over fast because you are talking quickly, it will be over even fast because you left whole chunks out. I have seen ten minute presentations go in just two minutes and the presenter is left standing there wondering what to do next because it made no sense because they forgot half of it.

If you forget something go back and cover it. The audience doesn't know the order you originally intended to speak so they wont notice. This is the same for all of your presentation - they don't know what it was supposed to be like so if you make mistakes or change things they wont notice anyway.

However you think its going, its going 5 times better. That is not a guide - that is fact. If you think its dreadful they think its ok. If you think its ok they think it was the best presentation of the day. If you think it was great they will think its the best they have ever heard.

Linux - its not really ready for mainstream yet is it......

Linux has been loitering with intent, and has generally been a PR pest to Microsoft for quite some time now.  Its been a bit like a school child that has been waiting for ages to get a role in the nativity play.  Its been telling its teachers and parents for ages that its absolutely brilliant at acting, and the audience will be able to believe in it more and like it more than the bigger boys who always seem to get the lead role.

So finally the big day comes and little Linux is given a great supporting part.  He is really nervous and has put on his best clothes that he thinks the audience will like the most.  As he wanders out onto stage at his cue the lights seem a lot brighter than he imagined, and the audience a whole lot bigger.  The audience give him a round of applause as he walks on because they have heard so much about him.  He delivers his first line and........ not a chuckle, it hasn't quite worked.

Little Linux is in a bit of a panic now - what he thought would amuse the crowd isn't really working.  Its all a bit crap.  He delivers his second line and the audience are a bit dissappointed, it wasn't what they were expecting.  Then a bit of his costume falls off - oops that wasn't meant to happen!

Shortly after the bigger boys come back on stage and the audience are amused again, yes this is what they came for - it just works.

So Linux has finally got its big chance to impress the maintstream, not just geeks in darkened rooms with the stereotype acne. The netbook has arrived riding on the wave of cloud computing and cheap simplicity.  Linux has generally risen to the occasion and presented the public with something it hasn't seen for 15 years (or since the Speak and Spell) - a computer with a simple no frills interface that just does what you need.

Its been very refreshing indeed.  Cheap, light and portbale computers that don't have you paying for bloatware with features you don't need. The public have embraced it with open arms.

On the surface it all seems good.  The interface is simple and in some cases locked down - you cant get up to much mischief, but then why would you want to, you only want to knock out a couple of emails and check Facebook anyway.

Well its all good until you try and do something even slightly off the page of the product managers spec sheet.  If he didn't think about the thing you wanted to do, well you are out of luck mate.  There is not a lot of flexibility in Linux for a non-geek.

Let me give you an example.  I bought an Acer Asipre One netbook.  The hardware is amazing. £199 gets you an attractive little machine that is pretty nippy. I used it with enthusiasm for a week until I tried to do something that I dont think is too out of the ordinary - connect to the Internet out of the home.....

The Aspire One uses its own tied down implemetation of something called Linpus Lite.  Its easy to use, lightening fast but is so tied down you cant even install your own apps.  A little search on the Internet and I learned a little hack to open up advanced mode and allow me to install Skype.  I really shouldnt have had to hack it to install such a mainstream bit of software, and I sincerely hope they solve this in the future.  But it all worked so all was good in my life again.

I have a 3G USB data card from 3.  Brilliant little device that gives me near broadband speed access to the Internet almost everywhere for £10 a month (so long public WiFi). I happily plugged it into the machine and....... nothing...

Acer have stripped the ability to install a cellular modem out of the operating system.  Even if you have the drivers its just not possible. Doh! Did the product manager not sit down for five minutes and think "what would people most likely want to do with a small, portable netbook?  I know take it out of the house!".  No he didn' consider it for even a second.

After nearly a week of research I managed to almost get it to connect once.  I had to download some ripped Vodafone software in another language for another machine.  Gain root rights to install it (yes I had to go to the Linux command line to install and configure it).

The process to get it to work each time was simply amazing.  Each time I wanted to get it to connect I would have to open the Linux command line and gain root rights and then type a bunch of Linux commands.  Then maybe with a following wind it might connect.  I reckon for a non-Linux geek it was about five minutes of hacking before each connection.  By that time your train arrived at its destination and you no longer have time to get your email anayway!  

There is no way in the world even the most accomplished computer users are going to consider it.

But I don't like to give up easily.  So I thought I would look into other solutions.  I have a really nice 3G phone (Nokia E71, excellent).  So I got the cable out and plugged the two together.  Nope Linux is not going to do anything with that.

Ok Bluetooth must be the answer.  No plugging a Bluetooth dongle in did very little, and even if I can get it to connect I just remembered it has no way to setup a cellular connection anyway.  Oh dear.

Then I had a brainwave.  Whilst at Nokia Zell am See this year I met a guy late one night at the bar.  I had been drinking some sort of drink that had flames with some Finns but I vaguely remembered the conversation.  He had a bit of software that sat on your Nokia phone and turned it into a WiFi hotspot using its 3G connection as backhaul.  Brilliant! Come back WiFi all is forgiven.

So I buy the software, Joiku Spot, and actually its brilliant.  I conected my big Vista laptop no problem.  I try to conenct the Aspire One and...... it cant see the hotspot, why? Of course I should have realised the product manager hadn't just not thought about people wanting to connect on the move, he had proactively disabled everything that could allow it.  My god he is evil!

The Acer Aspire One is possibly the only laptop that will not see an ad-hoc WiFi connection, it only sees infrastrucutre networks.  Yes those happy chaps at Acer had stripped the ad-hoc bit out.

So thats it, there are no other avenues open to me.  The machine has now been sold and I am actually quite sad as I really liked it.

I did think not all netbooks can be this thick, so I tried an Asus Eee PC (the one that started it all).  That works not problem with the USB modem from 3 (although its not exactly user friendly).  Problem is WiFi.  Someone recently told me "Linux isn't all that good with WiFi, especially encrypted WiFi".  He wasn't kidding.  The preferred connection method of over 50% of broadband households is a bit of a no no.  It simply would not work with my WPA encrypted network.  Would have been nice if it told me that was the problem, but actually it was telling me falsely that the problem was it couldn't get a DHCP IP address, the crafty liar. 

Even when I did get it working on WEP and unencrypted networks, every now and then it would just sort of throw up and refuse to connect to any WiFi network for hours for no real reason. I would then have to delete all my saved connections and re-set them up.  And if that didnt work restore the whole computer back to factory setup and erase all my data, then it would randomly be fine for a while.

So that didn't work either.  The fact is connectivity is just one of the problems.  There are similar types of problem across the board.  Linux just is not evolved enough yet. It needs some serious work to stop its inards from spilling out all over the unsuspecting beginner users lap from time to time.  It needs not to require Mensa membership to connect to the Internet.

 

Although that is an interesting point, maybe this is part of some bigger plot to do with natural selection.  perhaps I'm am being exlcuded from the Internet (and therefore life itself) because I am not smart enough.  Maybe Acer are hoping to spawn an super race of smart people, and let the thickies wither and die on the vine.  Anyway, back to business, sorry!

If you try Windows XP on the same devices its slow and more complicated to use. But it does work.  I plug things in and they just work.  I install software and it just works.

I think the main thing Linux is doing right now is to show the world what a great operating system Windows XP has become.  Which is quite amusing really as Windows Vista was sort of showing the world that already.

My advice?  Go and get a netbook, they are a brilliant concept.  But just make sure you get the Windows XP version.  Come back to the Linux nativity play in a couple of Christmas' time.