MOBILE10 interview: Margaret Gold, @mobilemaggie
I first met Margaret Gold by chance when we both arrived late for a Mobile Monday London that was unfortunately oversubscribed so we couldn’t attend. She’s working on some very cool initiatives in the health and educations sectors.
Name, current job and company
Margaret Gold – Freelance advisor & consultant, Co-founder & co-organiser of Over the Air, Founder of the Mobile Collective
What’s your app of the moment?
I’m increasingly using Evernote, and am a pretty heavy user of all of the Google Apps and online tools over the mobile web. My phone is full of toddler games to keep my little one occupied when I need my hands free for a few minutes. Her favourite is Monkey Lunchbox. My favourites are all on the iPad: Groove, Osmos HD & Machinarium.
What is your primary phone?
I’m a big Android fan. Currently I’m using the Nexus and am really pleased with it’s battery life. I got a chance to check out the Lumia at the Nokia World after-party and was actually quite impressed with the hardware design. I’m not really a fan of the Windows interface though.
Which mobile startups have you got your eye on?
I think that Maureen Scott is on to something with her Ether Books start-up to bring short stories to the mobile phone, and look forward to watching her writers community disrupt the publishing industry.
I’m quite interested in disruptive innovation in the fields of healthcare, education and science – so I’m watching startups like Patients Know Best; not-for-profit initiatives like the Khan Academy; and crowd-sourced science games like Foldit and Galaxy Zoo. Those examples are all web-based at the moment, but they have huge potential on the mobile web or as mobile apps. I’m keen to see what Massive Health will come up with in the mHealth sector.
What are you currently working on?
I’ll be doing some work with Ether in the new year, and the Over the Air team is already starting to make plans for 2012 (dates to be announced soon), but my main project at the moment is the Mobile Collective, which takes a collaborative approach to mobile innovation in other industries such as healthcare & science.
What will be the biggest opportunity in 2012?
As ever, there is so much exciting development going on in the mobile industry that I’d say that the biggest opportunity lies simply in BEING mobile. If you’re not focused on mobile-first, then you’re missing the action.
But I do think that most interesting advances will be made in applying mature mobile technologies in other fields – my money is on the healthcare sector for the most profitable opportunities.
Who are your 3 rockstars in mobile?
It’s been a huge pleasure to work with Dan Appelquist and Matthew Cashmore on Over the Air these past 4 years, and they are most definitely both stars. I’d also have to nominate Tim Berners-Lee as my kind of rockstar – the work being done by the W3C on mobile web standards and the OpenData movement will revolutionise how we use the mobile phone at the moment.
Who were you working for 10 years ago?
In 2001 I was just graduating from the international MBA programme at the Rotterdam School of Management, watching all of my interviews with VCs, Incubators and e-commerce start-ups go *poof* as the dot com world crashed into ruins. I ended up joining an IT Services firm as a Programme /Project Manager and IT Strategy consultant to build up more hands-on technology skills while the digital world recovered.
Who was/is your best boss?
I’ve been my own boss for quite awhile now, although my little girl is competing for that role – she can be quite strict about where things need to go and how games work.
Who else should we interview?
I nominate Daniel Appelquist to be up next.