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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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.
Only two weeks or so, and we’ll be off. One of the most exciting (well, correct that: the most exciting) mobile events of the year will kick off, namely MLOVE. Hosted in a proper medieval German castle, it boasts an incredible line-up of holistic mobile thinkers and tinkerers and all the ingredients to “change your life” (quote some of the participants of previous iterations!).
So here’s the speaker line-up:
- Grammy-winning musician and multi-platform entrepreneur Chamillionaire;
- Yuri van Geest, the man behind Trend8;
- Thomas Goetz, Executive Editor of Wired (!);
- Russell Buckley, employee #1 at AdMob (and a ton of other things!);
- Kei Shimada, one of Japan’s premier wireless ambassadors;
- Jason Collins, Alcatel-Lucent’s VP of Emerging Technology and Innovation (and one of those awesome uber-smart people);
- Daniel Graf of Google’s Mobile Apps Labs fame;
- Jean Schmitt, one of France’s smartest investors (and with JolTech and powerhouse Sofinnova);
- Rovio’s Mighty Eagle, Peter Vesterbacka (how angry can your bird get?);
- Thorsten Dirks, CEO of E-Plus
- Beverly Jackson, the Director Marketing & Social Media of the Grammy Awards;
- plus leaders from Volkswagen, OgilvyOne, leaders in education, philosphers, bloggers, the CEO of Butterfly Corp, Dentsu (Japan’s #1 ad agency), Contagious and the indomitable Corvida Raven (of SheGeeks) and Jonathan MacDonald (of This Fluid World), composers, DJs, and, last but not least Adele Waugaman, the UN Foundation’s Sr. Director for their Technology Partnership.
We will also run a Teen Camp for the generation that really matters, which is run in conjunction with the Hasso Plattner (he of SAP fame) Institute, which I have the great honour to co-curate together with 16-year-old Tony Neidhardt (who – despite her tender age – is already a veteran in the scene!) and Jane Mason.
In one (well, few) word(s): it will be absolutely awesome!
If you feel inclined to join (and you really, really, really should!!!), check in here.
Next week, on 15 October 2010, there will be the fantastic opportunity to bask in the glory of Oxford University and attend what many say is one of THE outstanding conferences in the mobile space, namely the University of Oxford’s Mobile Apps and Technologies Conference 2010.
I will be speaking as will James Elles, MEP and folks from Vodafone, IBM, Edelman and many more, including some of the most eminent analysts and strategists of the mobile space. The conference prides itself that it does not deliver any sales pitches, and it is not even very expensive!
So come along and join us for a great day of learning, discussing and networking.
This should have come a week earlier but, alas, I was on the road – quite literally – en route to San Diego and Qualcomm’s most excellent Uplinq conference.
Life of course did not stop, and amongst the things you should not miss was (and is!) the last iteration of the formidable Carnival of the Mobilists, hosted by our very own Peggy Anne Salz on her award-winning MSearchGroove blog. Amongst the gems not to be missed were:
- An interview of a company focused on Windows Phone 7 (yes, you read that right!);
- Tomi Ahonen with another go at the app economy (which he claims isn’t much of an economy; read my comments on this here);
- A look on web bookmarks as an alternative to apps (to which I still not agree; cf. here);
- A couple of posts on Android, and specifically Motorola’s Droid X (and the future, if any, of Motoblur);
- And many, many more…
Finally, my post on Vodafone’s pondered changes to its revenue share structures featured, too.
The carnival is here, and well worth a read! And, again, my apologies for the late posting of this. But the old Highway 101 along the Pacific just had me in its grips… 
On 17 June, a wonderful conference opens its doors: organized by the formidable Rudy de Waele and his team, the beautiful city of Barcelona (but without the usual Mobile World Congress stress and with better weather than in February!) is host to Mobile 2.0 Europe.
You will find a great line-up of speakers from across the mobile ecosystem, which should allow for a wonderfully balanced overview of what’s going on. The organizers have lined up senior guys from the giants of the industry, such as:
- Nokia
- RIM
- Vodafone
- Opera
- Telefonica
- Orange
- PayPal Mobile
- Microsoft
But they then coupled them with the nimble and agile guys like us, so you will also find:
- Distimo (analytics)
- Scoreloop (yes, I will be speaking)
- The Astonishing Tribe (UI experts)
- W3C
- Future Platforms
- and more…
As if this wasn’t enough, the AppCircus will also stop at the event with an on-stage show of the best and brightest apps around.
Join us, it should be tremendous fun! The registration page is here.
This weeks Carnival of the Mobilists is hosted over at mobiEnthusiast (with a strikingly familiar WordPress theme), and it comes with a lot of goodies, amongst which a stat-packed post on mobile money (and one on why banks need to fully understand it), Ajit Jaokar’s take on net neutrality, the iPad as a spoke in the mobile wheel, a look iAd vs Google/AdMob as well as two podcasts from carnivalist extraordinaire Peggy Salz: A Thomson Reuters SVP suggesting mobile is about companion products and Handmark’s Paul Reddick on why a good brand and a great app may not be quite enough.
Last but not least, my post on the state of mobile games on Android has been included.
So go over there and have a good read. It’s here.
