Blog by Paul Golding

Within the Futures and Innovations group at O2, I currently lead the technical "Platform Strategy," which is all about finding new ways to enable open innovation and co-creation of services that utilise underlying O2 assets for a number of ends. I also lead the O2 Incubator scheme (more experiment at this stage), which is thus far going well.

There is a job opening within the newly formed platform team.

However, this isn't just about Network-as-a-Service (listen to my podcast interview "Open Mobile" with Andreas Constantinou). Much of the role is about looking at new platform opportunities - i.e. creating new capabilities and new network effects that combine with the substantial O2 (and Telefonica) base. There is a lot of thinking and experimenting to be done in the area of low-friction interaction between telco services and Web. Much of the platform work involves re-thinking what a "connected service" is in the age of the "Social Web." Lots of telcos talk about this stuff. I'm trying to do stuff, not just talk about it.

Under my technical direction, we have begun a series of experiments, such as the creation of #Blue, which is an evolution of the original Bluebook service, but built entirely using lean-web methods and atop of modern scalable storage (e.g. MongoDB). Whereas the original Bluebook was (and is) positioned as a "back-up", which is a useful and highly requested service, its delivery is relatively closed, unable to exploit the potential for other services using the data. 

One of the innovation questions for #Blue is how might interactivity with texts on the Web create new types of user experience, somewhat uniquely because of the network ability to carbon copy text messages in mid-flight. One way to find out is to try new ideas, which is easier when using a lean-web set-up. The other is to let innovators dream up their own ideas and build them on top of the #Blue API, which is what we did at the WarbleCamp hackday, leading to Adam Burmister's interesting smsowl.com hack, which copies P2P texts to Twitter if the sender includes a #owl tag.

Although I'm told that the use of the term Ninja is now un-hip, the role was originally penned as "Platform Ninja." Of course, I should explain the term... It's a multi-tasking role that requires a fair whack of strategic thinking supported by an acute knowledge of Web trends (social and technological) and Web technologies, combined with the ability to code. The coding skills need to be proficient hands-on and able to work or play in a range of languages and frameworks in order to build demos and try out ideas, or perhaps just to sniff around an interesting open source project or API to see what's up. The role requires the combination of all these skills to their maximum combined effect, hence "Ninja."

As a strategist and technologist, you will need to demonstrate clear thinking about the future and then be able to evangelise it. However, this isn't about creating slide decks. As a coder, you will need to show the next step ... to go build something, or find a way to get it built, thereby demonstrating or proving that the strategy makes sense.

If the role sounds fun and exciting to you - then waste no time in applying.