A good e-mail interview was published at the Dutchcowboys weblog on Febuary 6 2009 by Henk de Hooge. This is the translation.

SPRX, Zcapes and the passion for mobile

Everybody knows them by now, Maarten Lens-FitzGerald, Raimo van der Klein and Claire Boonstra. They are the founders of MoMo Amsterdam, one of the most successful Mobile Mondays worldwide. And set up their company SPRXmobile in the streamline and recently initiated a new start-up Zcapes.

Enough reasons to ask some questions to one of the most passionate people I know, one of the first bloggers at Dutchcowboys, @dutchcowboy on Twitter and a lot more. But also someone who saw the other side of life when last year was diagnosed with cancer. An e-mail interview with Maarten Lens-FitzGerald.

What made you start MoMo?

Raimo van de Klein, Yuri van Geest and I started Mobile Monday Amsterdam (MoMo) in order to connect professionals in the mobile field. Before that first event we organized on June 4, 2007, there was no event for professionals and people interested in mobile to get together. We wanted to ‘share’ speakers who inspire us, such as Jyri Engestrom, Joe Pine, Doc Searls and Bruce Sterling. MoMo offered us a platform to invite such visionary people to the Netherlands.

Furthermore, my personal aim was to experiment with a ‘backchannel’. Yuri had told me about it and MoMo was perfect to try this out. It turned out to be successful and the backchannel has become an integral part of the event.

Did you anticipate the enormous success of MoMo? Personally I think the success is due mostly to the fact that you drew on your network.

We figured that some 40 to 50 people would come to the first MoMo in June 2007, but more than 250 turned up. At the latest MoMo, more than 450 people participated and the tickets sold out within a couple of hours. It was a full house at the ‘De Rode Hoed’ venue and the number of members in the community has grown to more than 2,300. We definitely did not expect that.

Looking back, I think it’s because we started doing the right thing at the right time. And we were very transparent about it. You could follow our meetings on twitter, we asked for advice and help and listened carefully to feedback. Combined with our own passion for the event and its content, that has proven to be a good formula. And don’t forget the sponsors that Yuri manages to tie to into MoMo. This has had two effects: people take MoMo more seriously and we do too as we have sponsors contracts to fulfill.

The MoMo team receives no remuneration for the work and this charitable basis evokes confidence which also helps.

Has MoMo changed your outlook on the mobile world?

It has enriched my outlook. All the speakers that we have had and with whom we had the opportunity to spend some time with, have personally enriched me: Jyri with social objects, Joe with the Multiverse, Doc with VRM, etc. etc. And don’t the participants, both their questions as the audience and in personal discussions. It’s their lessons and opinions that count for me.

A good example is the third MoMo, in which the audience voted on the top ten tips on how to go on mobile internet as a company. “Just do it” was the tip that got most of the votes. That underlined my own view, respectively that new and innovating business is essentially change management and that there is only one way to start, namely, by doing it, and doing it now. And then to learn and to grow.

The same also applies to MoMo. We set a date for the first MoMo which we communicated and only then we went out to get speakers for the event. We ‘just did it’.

Is SPRX a logical step when you dive so deep into mobile. There must have been an itch?

Looking back, SPRX is a very logical step. However, we did not realize that when we started. Especially me, at the time I had a firm job and no urge to set up a business of my own.

Early 2008, we had a workshop with the MoMo team to see what we had actually achieved. In the meantime, the MoMo team had expanded to include Marc Fonteijn, Claire Boonstra and Sam Warnaars as the MoMo Intern. The workshop was meant to assess what we were actually doing that worked so well, and also to see if we should do more with it.

We realized that in one way or another, we produced sparks, sparks that inspire people and organizations, that ‘kindle’ people and organizations and get them moving. And so we came up with the name SPRX (‘sparks’). That is what we do.

The workshop clearly showed that we were a good combination and created energy. A company was a logical step. That was in January 2008. In March, I was at work in the office when I received a single question from Raimo: “will you join?” After some reflection, I said: “yes”, and that was the real start of my SPRXmobile adventure.

The current MoMo president, Marc Fonteijn, did not join in as he had already set up his own company, 31Volts . He is SPRXmobile’s ‘uncle’. Sam was still a student. So, SPRXmobile was set up in May 2008 with Raimo, Claire, Yuri and me. Yuri left last December to pursue other endevours and now SPRXmobile consists of Raimo, Claire and me. In the meantime we already have the first freelancers working for us.

How do you prevent MoMo from becoming a SPRX marketing channel?

By not using it as such. That sounds simple and that is what it is. We do not use MoMo as a sales stage for SPRX, of for any other company for that matter. Unless it concerns a really remarkable case such as Play MegaPhone that got a lot of attention at the latest MoMo.

In the meantime, Raimo and I have left MoMo’s team in order to fully concentrate on SPRXmobile and our startup Zcapes. That helps as well.

With SPRX, you are positioning yourself as a Strategic Creative Consultancy (Mobile Service Architects). How will you fulfill that?

By helping companies to take the step into mobile and realize their projects. We’ve got the vision, the knowledge and the experience to do this. A unique combination of creation, strategy, media and development experience. And we know how to get people and organizations into action. SPRXmobile’s expertise and service covers three fields: Consultancy, Concept and Coding.

Consultancy: to answer the question of ‘why’ and ‘whereto’, For instance, for the Rabobank, we wrote a vision document for mobile. And for the NOS (part of the Dutch PBS) we started in the same way, respectively, by developing a strategy for them. Or, as with the Voedingscentrum (The Nutrition Centre), making it clear why they want to use QR-code. Mobile is new for most of the companies. By using our vision and strategy, we provide direction for mobile initiatives. However, some companies just want to start. Which is good. The essence of what I have learned with innovation is: ‘to move forward’. Just as it became clear earlier with MoMo: ‘Just do it’.

Concept: to develop or create the service that is suitable to the company, brand or organization. This can be simple, as a mobile website with address information and route description, or a complete application such as what we did for the NOS, or the ING Wegwijzer. We create and shape the concept: content, interaction, design, maintenance and marketing.

All things considered, marketing is the hardest part. So much energy goes into the concept, that little remains for the marketing of the site or application while that part actually needs more than 50% of the energy. Mobile is still a new channel and a lot of ‘power’ is required to make people discover the mobile website, or to have them download the application.

Coding: to develop and build the mobile websites and applications. Mobile websites have their own variety for each phone in order to function optimally. And applications come in different ‘tastes’. We develop applications from scratch, or we adapt applications acquired under license.

SPRXmobile knows how to develop on various platforms and the reason for choosing which platform (Java, Android, iPhone, mobile website, etc.). We have had several years of experience with development processes to manage programming work towards a good result. And we do this quickly. For the Voedingscentrum there was less than three weeks time for the development of the campaign site. And we made it. The ING Wegwijzer was live within two weeks…

You yourselves are no developers. Where and how do you build up your applications?

Websites we often make in cooperation with MoMac. Their platform is capable to represent the mobile site well on all types of mobile phones. For the development of applications, we have a network of specialists with whom there is a “match” and who delivered good applications before. Or we work together with larger application developers, such as WeComm.

We are well equipped to deal with the width of the diffuse application market concerning development. When clients opt for us, they dont opt for one platform, such as iPhone or Android. We are independent and support the whole width of application platforms and specialties.

What is Zcapes? You yourselves call it a new start-up.

Indeed, it is our start-up that we created because we felt the need to start initiatives besides our work for clients. Zcapes is the first.

Zcapes means that you miss nothing. Zcapes helps you to get the right information out of the digital world in every context (or situation), information that often cannot be ‘googled’.

Zcapes is a collection of mobile starting pages for events, groups, objects or activities. An object can be a museum or a shop such as, the Bijenkorf (a Amsterdam department store). An event could be MoMo, or a skiing trip with your friends. A group could be your family. In a Zcape you will find all relevant information and conversation on that situation.

For instance, the Bijenkorf Zcape contains feed on offers, photo’s from Flickr and tweets tagged with ‘Bijenkorf’, location data, a poll on the last sale. And in the comments, you can read that food critic Van Dam was right (with his critical restaurant review), but also that the restaurant in the meantime has started to improve. So, when traveling by tram to the center of town, you can have a look at the Bijenkorf Zcape.

You can discover other Zcapes important to you based on your location, friends, tags or popularity. Zcapes can be open, or private (for instance, only for friends, or ‘by invitation only’).

You use Zcapes primarily on your mobile telephone, whereas you do the construction of Zcapes (everyone can be a Zcapist) via laptop of PC.

How will you make this application successful knowing that the market is getting very crowded with all sorts of applications? What will be the difference?

Zcapes is not a application, for now… Its a mobile website. A platform. We want users, people who set up Zcapes and people who use Zcapes on their mobile phone. But that takes time. Mobile internet is new for many people, let alone a digital layer which they can access on the way to somewhere.

First our focus is on events and personal Zcapes. For events, we will partner with event organizations. Which will allow people going to events to learn about Zcapes and how to use them for their own objectives. These are many small steps that will make us popular. And while growing, we, the Zcapes users and builders, will learn a lot one from the other. We will all contribute to make it a success.

You have chosen the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona as launching stage for Zcapes. What will you do over there?

What’s going to happen in Barcelona will remain a secret for now. What I can say is that we will do it our own way, without renting a booth or something traditional.

According to Maarten, the PC will disappear. Any more predictions?

• Augmented Reality will become mainstream, although in a simple form. For example, the ING Wegwijzer and NRG.
• The notion that Mobile Service Architecture will become more popular and published as a book.
• Not everybody likes Google anymore. Like Microsoft, they are becoming too powerful. They collect a large part of the media budgets and know too much about us. That will cause friction in 2009.
• Context will become the new content and LBS.
  Mobile will continue to be difficult due to the many phones and platforms (and will become more complex).
• Android will be more important than iPhone.

So, what’s next?

SPRX will grow. We have a lot of work coming our way, and are enjoying a lot of success. While this is fantastic, we need to be cautious in our approach. There are fantastic projects in the pipeline, about which I will tell more when they are completed. Furthermore, we will shortly launch a simple and clever SMS initiative that will be called HIER (HERE).

Also:

• See Raimo speak at the MWG congress on February 13th.
• Meet me at the LIFT conference at the end of February in Geneva.
• Meet Claire in the near future, walking behind a stroller in the park (and back in the office in June!), and virtually at the set-up of the event ‘What Women Want on Mobile’.

Translation courtesy of Fasko Translations.

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