First of all let me say Happy Thanksgiving! Strange to make a first blog post on a holiday? Yes, I agree… but the fact is I’ve been wanting to do this for quite sometime and I feel that when a moment arises, well, if you don’t take the bull by the horn then it’s gone.
So, let me introduce myself. My name is Anita Wilhelm. I graduated in May from the graduate program at SIMS (School of Information Management) at University of Berkeley, CA. I am an interaction designer and have been working with mobile device interface design for the past two years. Most of my current interest lies with camera phones and mobile media. How are they reshaping our daily interactions? How can we manage the storage and retrieval of media differently, now? And most of all, how on earth do we actually get people to use media related devices on their phones? You can read some of the research I have performed with Prof. Marc Davis and Garage Cinema Research on my website at: http://sims.berkeley.edu/~awilhelm. You can also read more about my background here (although I warn you this site is very out of date!)
After graduating from school in May, I worked over the summer as in interaction designer at Yahoo! Mobile. Great place to work! I highly recommend it. Extremely bright people, motivated, and clever. However, I decided to leave and try something on my own. So, my partner Erick Herrarte and I have been working with some folks on getting Caterpillar Mobile up and running. The focus of the company is on mobile media gaming. Fun with your mobile pictures, video, and sounds. Our first product http://cameraphonegame.com is currently in Alpha.
I ran my first marathon a month ago in Chicago!
I intend for this site to be discussion of my thoughts on mobile things. I do not intend for it to be plug for my work… However, I can’t promise that from time to time I may stray to rant or rave about thoughts on my mind or things I am doing that may benefit all. At times my opinions may differ from those of the general populous of mobility… but if so, I beckon that you realize there are two sides to every argument…
I am currently reading “The Art of the Start” by Guy Kawasaki and I will just mention his thoughts on business models here and request for you to keep them in mind:
My theory is that deep in the DNA of men is a ‘killer’ gene. This gene expresses itself by making men want to kill people, animals, and plants. To a large degree, society has repressed this gene; however, starting an organization whose purpose is to kill another organization is still socially acceptable.
Hence, asking a man about a business model is useless because every business model looks good to someone with a Y chromosome. For example, Sun Microsystems wants to kill Microsoft. When is the last time you bought a computer based on whom the manufacturer wanted to kill?
Women, by contrast, don’t have this killer gene. Thus they are much better judges of the viability of a business model than men are…
Thank-you, Guy. How this pertains to mobility? I was noticing while at conferences (CTIA, UbiComp, etc.) and other mobile related forums around the Bay Area, that there seems to be a lack of female presence (more than in the general tech field). My theory is that the field is just new…. but here I offer one to you.
I hope you find it interesting, useful, and at times perhaps even entertaining.
See you tomorrow or so.
Anita