This week is still all about Casual Connect Europe but then it is off to Barcelona for the annual mobile fest that is Mobile World Congress. I will be there from Sunday night onwards and you should earmark a couple of things (where you will likely be able to meet me, too):
Mobile Sunday has fast become a tradition amongst the mobile bloggerati and it is now being frequented by more and more industry folks. The list of attendees (which funnily still has me with an ancient affiliation that I haven’t held in years) reads well. Check it out and come by for a gentle kickstart into the week!
Next up is the Mobile Premier Awards, the global competition of Mobile Monday-nominated high-flyers where I had the great pleasure and honour to judge upon. The award night is on Monday.
On Wednesday, we have Swedish Beers (Facebook Event page) in Barcelona, which already had 254 confirmed guests (as per FB) the last time I checked.
And on Thursday, Caroline Lewko’s WIP Jam, the developer world’s leading and most beloved un-conference, opens its doors, an event I really look forward to. There’s a party for that, too, of course…
If you would like to get in touch, drop me a line through the contact form.
A fresh new year with the conference and rumour seasons already in full swing, 2010 promises to becoming an exciting one for all things mobile. So let’s be kicking off another Carnival of the Mobilists (it is carnival season, too, after all). What do we have this week?
Russell Buckley looks at the benefits but also disadvantages of a retail experience online, on mobile and on the high street. He looks at this from the perspective of search vs discovery and, alas, the mobile being, well, mobile, he predicts some impact. Suffice to say, it involves the renaissance of the (much beloved by me) local bookstore! Russell’s post is here.
Mark Jaffe has an almost lyrical contribution musing about “monetizing passion” (and he is quick to point out that, despite the closeness to that other show in Las Vegas last week, he is not talking about adult entertainment). It is an intriguing angle on a well-covered topic: he basically posits that the ability to digitally provide the immediacy of satisfying passion presents one of the greatest marketing opportunities around. I concur! His post is here.
WIP Jam contributes a very insightful guest post by Informa Principal Analyst Malik Saadi who suggests that the fragmented smartphonosphere (great word!) and resultant increasing costs of native development will provide a lever for the mobile web, and he reasons it well! He reckons that the low latency of next-generation networks (LTE et al) will make the web the new ubiquitous platform for app development. If the battery life of the devices holds up, I might add… Malik’s post is here.
The good folks at mobiThinking have a great overview of available mobile metrics reports from the various ad networks, and all of them in one place. A fantastic resource! Their write-up is here.
And, finally, Aviv Revach looks forward to the Mobile World Congress and the second most important thing (after actually finding a place to sit down for your meetings) and is assembling a compilation of networking events (and, well, yes, parties) in Barcelona. Make sure to check in on his post (which he will update) here.
Which concludes this week’s Carnival. Now get back to your work and if you are attending the Mobile Games Forum or the conference that starts the mobile build-up to this summer’s FIFA World Cup, namely M-Football (both in London), make sure to connect; I’ll be at both.
Image credit: http://cbertel.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/carnival-masks-2.jpg
Mobile bloggers who read this and have not yet registered (well, can you then really be mobile bloggers?), note that Rudy de Waele, mobile blogger extraordinaire, with the generous support from his people at MyStrands hold yet another Mobile Sunday ahead of this year’s Mobile World Congress (I am still itching to write 3GSM…) in Barcelona, more specifically on Sunday, 10 February.
Mobile Sunday is, in their own words, “an unofficial, informal and generally cool and funky gathering of mobile bloggers and their chums”, and, yes, I’ll attend in the vain hope that something cool and funky will rub off…
You’ll find the registration page here.
See you all in Barcelona!
