Mobile 2.0 Wrapup

Yesterday was the Mobile 2.0 event I helped to organize in San Francisco. This was our second time running the event, and I think we learned a lot. This year the event flowed a lot better. Our policy of not allowing slides when doing panel introductions kept things moving along a lot better and kept the audience much more interested. Here’s a bunch of resources from the event:

• We had a Jaiku channel going for discussion during the event.
• Rudy created a Flickr group and has posted a Mobile 2.0 wrapup of his own.
• Richard MacManus (who I somehow managed to miss meeting yet again) posted a few items live:
  • Mobile 2.0 – The 7th Mass Media & Business Opportunities
  • Mobile 2.0 Launch Pad Part 1
  • Mobile 2.0 Launch Pad Part 2
  • Taptu Launches New Type of Mobile Search
• Oliver posted live on blognation, and provides a summary of the launchpad companies.
• Barbara Ballard posted about how many in the audience were using laptops.
• Tony Fish pointed out the Mobile Web 2.0 list of resources setup in netvibes.
• Kelly Goto has a detailed post from the fireside chat.
• A few people pointed to the Forum Oxford discussion groups, which you can sign up to for free, just use ‘forumoxford’ as the … something. I signed up a while ago, so I forget how the registration process works. But you can do it even if you’re not in courses. It’s a discussion group that pulls in a lot of great minds.
• Daniel Graff gave a fantastic compelling demo of Kyte.tv, something I’ll have to play around with for Mobile Monday events.
• Dennis from WAPReview has an amazing writeup covering absolutely everything top to bottom.
• Rob Tiffany posted about the lack of mentions of WinMo and CEO sums up why that is: focus shifting from platforms to applications. I think it’s cute that Rob thinks the reason there was no mention of WinMo is because we’re undereducated about it. No, I know what WinMo does, I just don’t care. Happy to talk about what MS can do to become relevant again in this space though.
• Atakan Cetinsoy from MyStrands posted his take on participating in the disruptive business models panel.
• Russ McGuire from the fireside chat posted his take on the mobile internet versus mobility, pointing out that mobility is not just making the internet mobile.

Some highlights of the day:

• Voytek Siewierski saying he was looking for companies that would destroy the business models the operators have, that woke everyone up right after lunch.
• Pat McVeigh’s comment that “Usability is the ultimate enabler.” He was also another big fan of open source, which I was very happy to see. And believes the browser is going to be the way forward for mobile applications.
• Russ Daniels made a number of points about use of mobility and generally just connectivity in the enterprise. There was a lot of commentary about the enterprise still being very much untapped. In particular Russ made some comments about the presence of wifi networks during a business meeting pretty much meaning you could read email while being bored. The presence of that network should facilitate greater productivity and cooperation during the meeting, but the tools that support that are very sparse.
• The point that Tomi made about Flirtomatic now being one of Britains leading florists. They allow sending virtual roses between users, and the numbers are staggering. Selling virtual goods within their service was enough that they were able to remove the subscription fee. Great success story.
• The emerging technologies panel I participated in was fantastic, it was great having a dedicated hour to hash out some ideas with that group. The overall themes were that open platforms, open tools, and open APIs have been a lot of what’s driving the growth so far, and still seems like the best way forward.
• Rudy gave a fantastic intro, including a slide summarizing Google’s move into mobile that he collaborated on with and has opened for further refinement