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.
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Remember one of the most wonderful resources for mobile bloggers? yes, it is the Carnival of the Mobilists and this month’s version is live now! It is a best of digest of May’s mobile-related blogs. This month, there are some real goodies! You will find:
- GoSub60′s Sean Thompson musing the question of whether to “go free”;
- James Coops from MobyAffiliates looking at the commercial opportunities of – you may have guessed – mobile affiliate marketing;
- Mobile marketing veteran Russell Buckley looks at mobile couponing as the next billion dollar market (mobile Groupon anyone?);
- Industry thinker and Futuretext founder Ajit Jaokar looking at whether the “two-sided market” model may not actually apply to carriers (and I tend to agree; here’s another blog post…
); - Our very own Peggy Anne Salz of MobileGroove (f/k/a MSearchGroove) focuses on marketing to digital natives;
- The Fonecast’s James Rosewell makes a case for Microsoft to buy Nokia (the rumour of which has just been refuted by Mr Elop himself though);
- Dennis Bournique of the WAP Review looks at where MeeGo is at these days;
- Richard Monson-Haefel looks at “omni-mobility”; and
- finally, my own bit on the evolving role of publishers also found a mention.
Go now and read it over here on Francisco Kattan’s blog and have a great time! 
Oh, and if you want to be part of this, make sure to look up the Carnival online and follow them on Twitter (@COTMobilists).
I have mentioned this earlier: Next week, I will be headed to beautiful Prague in order to attend and contribute to the European Mobile Media Conference. If you can, make sure to head over (there is even some last-minute discount).
The latest Carnival of the Mobilists is on now at Chetan Sharma’s Always On Real-Time Access blog. You can check it out here. Besides gratefully including my last post on 4G mobile gaming, he lined up some of the heavyweights and their contributions, including Tomi Ahonen on how to monetize mobile social networking (or not), Ajit Joakar on 4G and telcos, Russ Buckley’s musings over 1984 and more.
On 22/23 April, the glorious city of Prague will play host to the European Mobile Media conference. The event will cover the entire spread of the mobile media sector from content (games, music, TV) through to advertising and marketing with a focus on – what a surprise – monetization. There’s a great line-up of speakers, including mobile advertising guru Russell Buckley from Admob, agency heavyweights Jonathan MacDonald (Ogilvy) and Mark C Linder (WPP) as well as one of the industry’s brightest analysts, Peggy Anne Salz (mSearchGroove) and, last but not least, yours truly.
Happy new year, everyone! And to get you a good and informed start into 2009, here’s a pointer to a nice new service from Hungry Mobile, a blog run by Jan Rezab: he asked a few of us to contribute short assessments to a question he will ask once a week. Contributors include content industry executives, publishers, mobile marketing gurus, bloggers and mobile evangelists, and this should allow for a quick take from an inside circle of multipliers (as I think you call them/us) on various bits and pieces of our industry. I am chuffed to be asked to take part but I am also horrified that he allows us a full 400 characters per answer (not words, characters!).
