If you are in the North-West of England and have nothing to do or, rather, nothing really, really important to do, you may want to drop in for our latest Mobile Monday Manchester edition, which takes place tonight starting at 6pm at the BBC in the brand-spanking new MediaCityUK.
The topic of the night will be “Second Screen” and we will have people from all corners of that: speakers from the Beep itself, companies providing infrastructure and service as well as creative agencies that deliver on these screens.
More info here. To join us, please sign up here (there is only standing room left though…).
Yes, conference season is firmly upon us and, before I descend into the mayhem that tends to come with it, let me tell you where you can find me over the next couple of weeks.
This week sees London at the centre of a lot of things gaming: the Mobile Games Forum opens its doors on Wednesday in the Hilton Tower Bridge in SW1, which combines with the Social Games Forum. I will be speaking on a panel on “How to engage cross-promotion for social game discovery”.
There is also ICE in town but not the freezing variety but the big gaming (as in proper gaming for money and such) expo over at Earl’s Court, which rolls a variety of gaming-related tracks into this. I will be speaking on a panel on their mobile gaming track with the concise title “Incorporate Social and Mobile to create the Ultimate Modern Gaming Experience”.
Only a little later, on 7/8 February, we will be in Amsterdam for BlackBerry DevCon Europe. It is well worth coming to this to get a glimpse of the “new” BlackBerry and our plans there [disclosure: I work for BlackBerry]. Sign up here and hit me if you are a developer; I have a few discount codes left. I will lead a breakout session on Social Gaming with Scoreloop there.
Onwards to my old stomping grounds in Hamburg from there for the annual European edition of Casual Connect where I will deliver a talk on how BlackBerry will deliver on gaming (yes, you read that right!).
After that, there is a two week (conference) break before heading to Barcelona for the monster that is Mobile World Congress. I’ll be there all week!
Barely a weekend’s rest and the Game Developers Conference (or GDC) opens its doors at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. Again, it’ll be a full week for me there.
I hope I will meet you at one of those. Sorry that Asia isn’t featuring in this tour de force this time but, hey, it’s still early in the year, huh? 
Image credit: http://gapingvoid.com
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Things heat up, and not only because I am traveling South this week, more specifically to Dubai where, on Tuesday (1st), the Mindshare Media Summit 2011 will open its doors. It carries a heavy focus on marketing and media in a multi-screen world where screens and user experiences converge. The organizers have a great line-up of speakers, including:
- AKQA
- Nissan
- HSBC
- BBC Worldwide
- Yahoo!
- The MBC Group
- (of course) Mindshare
- The Arabian Radio Network
- and many more (including yours truly).
So if you would like to hook up in one of the most vibrant regions in the world, in one of the swankier settings and soak up some sun before the winter (if you live in the Northern hemisphere, that is), come by! 
A fairly wonderful conference will open its doors on 27 October in London, UK, namely Games for Brands, an event where we will do just that: investigate if and to what extent games may work for brands. Just speak to Barclaycard (their Waterslide Extreme game [done by Fishlabs] did more than 14m downloads on iOS) or Volkswagen (multiple games by Fishlabs [again]) for the Polo and others and a special VW Golf GTI edition of Real Racing by the recently acquired Firemint).
The event features a fairly cool line-up, too, including speakers from:
- Rovio (they of Angry Birds fame)
- Channel 4
- PlayGen
- BBC
- EMI
- King.com
- LoveFilm.com
- Tate
- Wellcome Trust (yes, they’re the Glaxo Wellcome guys)
- Aegon
- Matmi (they did games and apps for instance for Lily Allen, Gorillaz, United.com and Vimto – the seriously mixed-up fruit)
- and, yes, I will be talking again, too (but when don’t I?)
I also have a goodie for the readers of this blog: four of you can get a very special discount and attend for £95.00 only. Tempted? Contact me (either via e-mail or Twitter or through the contact form here).
It’ll be a good one, so come along!
This week, I will have the great pleasure to attend (and speak) at the NY Games Conference. If you are on the East Coast and into games, this is where you need to be. Join us! It’s worth it. There are speakers from:
- Ubisoft
- Samsung
- Majesco Entertainment
- Yesware
- Sony Computer Entertainment
- TAG Strategic (yes, Ted, the man himself!)
- Freeverse
- Greystripe
- Badgeville
- OnLive
- Atari
- EA Sports
- OpenFeint
- GameHouse/Real
- Sulake (of Habbo Hotel fame)
- Ogmento
- CBS Interactive
- Fremantle
- Wedbush (Michael Pachter himself!)
- Tapjoy
- RockYou
- Hi5 (yes, Alex St John will be there to delight)
- NVidia
- Wild Tangent
- GameStop
- MTV Networks
- and… me…
Add to this the formidable events for which Digital Media Wire are renowned, cool downtown NYC and nothing else going on that week (well, perhaps except F8), and you’re on for one hell of a gaming conference.
See you? See you!
Tonight (11 July), Mobile Monday Manchester opens its doors at Dukes 92, 18-20 Castle Street, Manchester, M3 4LZ (map). Our topic of the night will be Mobile Apps vs Mobile Web. We’ll put two teams against each other with short presentations making the case for apps and the web respectively, followed by a panel discussion.
As of last night, we had already had more than 120 registrations, so hurry if you want to come along. Registration is still open here.
