New-School Wireless

In 2002 University of Georgia at Athens New Media Institute director Scott Shamp launched the WAGZone, a Wi-Fi “cloud” that hovers over the school’s downtown campus area. Now he is the force behind the Mobile Media Consortium, a team of UGA students, faculty and industry partners including Hewlett-Packard, XcellNet, Air2Web, and ExecuTrain committed to promoting the growth of mobile services. Shamp--the subject of a Sept. 2002 WR profile--talks again with Jason Ankeny about his continuing efforts to expand the role of wireless technologies in university life.

On the WAGZone’s evolution: The WAGZone has stayed pretty much the same in terms of technology, but the uses and the applications have had explosive growth over the past year. When we designed the WAGZone, the whole purpose was for it to be a wireless research test bed. We call it “mobile media” a lot more now, because we really believe “wireless” just tells you what this technology ain’t, not what it is, and we really want to emphasize the ability to send rich content to people when they’re on the go. We designed the WAGZone to start to show people the power of the technology, so over the past year we’ve finished out probably 30 different applications. None of these applications is fully fleshed-out and ready to go--each is just an idea that allows people to catch on and see what’s possible and think about if they want to move it to the next level. The most important thing that’s grown out of the WAGZone has been a kind of creative fervor here that goes around trying new things with wireless.

On WAGZone applications: I’ll tell you a story. I took a group of students to a coffee shop in downtown Athens and there were a bunch of people with their heads down, just bangin’ on their keyboards. I turned to the students and said ‘Here is an example of the power of the WAGZone.’ One of the students raised her hand in the back of the group and said ‘Professor Shamp, I see the power of the WAGZone.’ And I was feeling pretty good about myself, and I said ‘Please, share with everybody what the power of the WAGZone is.’ She said, ‘I’ve never realized how many people in Athens have bald spots. Look at all these people--they’re all heads-down on their computers. Is that really what you designed? Is this what you put all this time and all this money into? These people aren’t enjoying what’s special about Athens at all.’ So we started really talking about the role technology should play, and that group came up with a project we call Rendezvous. It’s a PDA application so that when you come into downtown Athens, you can tell Rendezvous where you’re going to be and how long you’re going to be there. Then you can see where in downtown Athens your friends are, and how long they’re going to be there. The students loved that application because it wasn’t about the technology--it was about what they wanted to do in Athens. They wanted to meet people and interact and turn all of downtown Athens into one big party. Another application is a wireless walking tour that tells you about the things that were going on in Athens music in its heyday. Also, we have a pretty good football team and there’s a thriving ticket exchange that goes on, so one of the students developed what they called Got 2. It’s a way you can use your PDA to set up a ticket exchange--I can go onto my PDA and say ‘I’m going to be at the corner of College and Clayton, and I’ve got two seats in section 134 that I want to sell for $50.’ I hit my ‘Submit’ button, and then anybody who comes into downtown can see what tickets are available. It’s a way of connecting up with people so you don’t wander around all day.

On the future of applications: The business of wireless has been driven by what’s good for wireless, not necessarily what’s good for customers. Even though we’re all infatuated by camera phones or Hello Kitty animations or polyphonic ringtones, nobody really came up with those because there wasn’t a consumer sitting there going ‘Man, I want a polyphonic ringtone’ or looking at their cell phone and saying ‘Man, I wish this had a camera in it.’ It was a technology that the industry could produce, and now they’re trying to sell it to us. What we believe is going to be the future for the mobile media industry is when they really start to respond to the needs of the consumer and deliver those applications and services that will enhance people’s lives. There are going to be companies that will specialize in producing applications that will have widespread opportunities, but what’s going to be important is everybody’s going to need to tweak it for their communities. Here in Athens, we’re radically different from Chicago, let alone communities 50 miles down the street. But we do share some core needs. I don’t think there are going to be as many off-the-shelf applications that will work seamlessly out of the box for every community, but there will be generalized applications, like finding out about food and shopping opportunities and touring the area to find out what’s special. You’re going to need to plug content into those applications to make them relevant to your town.

On the Mobile Media Consortium: This started even before the WAGZone, when we got together a group of people for what we call a ‘research retreat.’ We brought together all these cool people from academics, government and business and said ‘Wouldn’t it have been cool if we could have seen the Internet happen back in 1994 instead of waiting until everybody found about it? What if we had gotten a head start? Where might we be? What are going to be the most important technological advancements in the next five years?’ After two days of banging away and talking and debating, mobility was the number one technology, and we realized it was because wireless and mobile media changes our relationship with information. All the other technologies were just about tweaking the relationship--mobility fundamentally changes the relationship. Before, information used to be a go-to--you had to go the library or the bookstore or the Internet. We’ve got a saying around here: “If you wanted to know, you had to go.’ But with mobile media, information ceases to be a destination, and it becomes a companion. As we figured out the WAGZone, we realized that we needed to focus not just on gee-whiz techno enthusiasm--we really needed to help the industry focus on things people wanted to do. The Mobile Media Consortium is focusing on the impact mobile media technology can have on the quality of people’s lives.

On the next generation of wireless innovators: We are very much student-driven, and involve our students in all of our projects here. So we created this class of students called Mobile Music Scholars, and they selected what we call quality of life verticals that were their own special focus. One selected education, another was healthcare, another was public transportation, another was people with special needs. They did research this past semester so that they understood people’s needs in that area, and next semester, they’re going to produce prototypes that address those needs. What we’re finding out is that the most important thing we’re providing to the Consortium partners is ideas. Every one of these partners tells us this is going to be the raw material that they use to build successful businesses. All of our research--all of our prototypes--are all about ideas.