Dan’s Blog (2.0)

I’m very excited to announce that on September 7th I will be co-presenting, with my friend and fellow Mobile Monday organizer C. Enrique Ortiz, a Barcamp-style event in Austin, Texas! The event will focus on mobile widgets and we are looking to bring in presenters and participants from all across the spectrum of companies and industry efforts involved in this burgeoning space. The event will feature a mix of structured and unstructured time, with both a program of speakers (to be announced but including speakers from OMTP and W3C) and an open schedule on which participants can write in their own sessions. If you’d like to attend, just put your name on the wiki (see link above). If you’d like to present in one of the pre-programmed slots, please get in touch with myself of Enrique.

Filed by Daniel Appelquist at 2:53 under Mobile Monday, Mobile Web
Tags: austin, barcamp, mobilemonday, MobileWeb, widgets

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…it must be the Mobile Monday Global Peer Awards! I’m sitting in the speakers’ lounge watching people file into the Espacio Movistar here in sunny Barcelona. Last year, we had 23 start-ups from 23 cities around the world presenting on stage. The atmosphere was electric. This year, with an even bigger venue and more start-ups, I’m even more excited to be here and to participate on the judging panel. This is also where the global Mobile Monday community is coming together - to network and to celebrate innovation and entrepreneurship in the mobile space.

Filed by Daniel Appelquist at 13:11 under Mobile Monday
Tags: Barcelona, mobilemonday, mwc2008

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Just a quick post on this. In a word, it was awesome. Kudos to Rudy for putting it together and likewise to everyone else involved in developing it. 23 startups from 23 Mobile Monday chapters around the world showcasing some great (and sometimes surprising) products and innovations. My head is still spinning.

Filed by Daniel Appelquist at 20:29 under Mobile Monday, Mobility
Tags: 3gsm, mobilemonday, momobarcelona

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I’ve been working with the folks at Mobile Monday New York and SVG.org to develop an event on mobile SVG for the end of this month. The theme will be SVG on mobile devices and we’ll be featuring presentations from Qualcomm, Opera, Ikivo Sun, Beatware and others. Antoine Quint of has put together an excellent roster of speakers and Lubna Dajani and the folks at MoMo NYC have lined up a great venue (the Samsung Experience at the Time Warner Center).

For more details, or to register for the event, please visit the event web site.

Filed by Daniel Appelquist at 11:50 under Mobile Monday, Mobile Web
Tags: events, mobile2.0, mobilemonday, Mobility, MoMoNYC, SVG, upcoming:135061, userexperience

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I’ll be at 3GSM this year again. I’m expecting (and hoping) this year’s event to be more interesting than last year’s. At the last event, it was all about MobileTV. This time, the Mobile Web will be front and center. I will be attending mainly in support of the W3C Mobile Web Initiative, which will have an increased presence (at the ignominiously designated 7D56 booth in Hall 7 - hopefully better placement than last year). We will also hopefully be featuring a special speaker this year on the mobile Web which I think will get people talking.
We will also be running a Mobile Monday “Global Peer Awards” event there this year, which is certainly a step up from the informal gathering around the Finpro booth we held last year. Rudy at Mobile Monday Barcelona has put together a great event with some help from Helsinki and some of the other chapters. I’ll be acting as a judge at the awards. This will be the 3rd annual Global Peer Awards, although the first to run at 3GSM (the last two ran at the Mobile Monday Global Summit in Helsinki). The awards will once again be throwing the spotlight on innovation in the Mobile community by featuring an array of start-up companies put forward by Mobile Monday chapters from around the world. If you’re going to be in Barcelona, I urge you to register early to be a part of this event before the space fills up. I guarantee it’ll be like nothing else you’re likely to see at 3GSM.

Also find more info on Upcoming.org.

Filed by Daniel Appelquist at 20:29 under Mobile Monday, Mobility
Tags: 3gsm, mobilemonday, MobileWeb, Mobility, momobcn, peerawards

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We have had some great coverage of the mobile2.0 event appear in the blogosphere and the press. Here are four particularly good and detailed run-downs of the day:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/11/17/mobile_2_zero_event/

http://opengardensblog.futuretext.com/archives/2006/11/mobile20_great.html

http://jlarienza.blogspot.com/2006/11/mobile-20-san-francisco.html (in Spanish)

http://gigaom.com/2006/11/07/mobile-20/

I was particularly impressed with the coverage in the Register. They never print anything positive about anything, so we must have done something right. If you attended the event and you wrote about it on your blog or took pictures, please leave a comment or trackback on the mobile2.0 event blog, here.

Filed by Daniel Appelquist at 11:34 under Blogs, Mobile Monday, Mobile Web, Mobility, mobile 2.0
Tags: mobile2event, mobilemonday

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Wow! Mobile2.0 exceeded my expectations in almost every way. 270 mobile and Web industry professionals filled the Grand Hyatt ballroom in San Francisco. Unfortunately I didn’t get any pictures myself because I was running around like a madman. We had great speakers and panelists, an engaged and participatory audience, and a hugely positive vibe during the breaks and at the reception. So many people came up to me with good things to say about the event. So many people commented that they felt like this was the start of something new - a new phase in the development of mobile services. So many peopled said they’d attend again if and when we run another event. I hope to post more wrap-up notes (and photos) later.

By the end of the day, I was more convinced than ever that we are at a turning point for the mobile Web.

Now I’m sitting in the Web 2.0 conference about to participate in a panel called “The Mobile Discussion.” This panel is buried at the bottom of the schedule, up against “BlogHer.” It has no description text. It has two people on it — me and Anssi Vanjoki from Nokia (plus the moderator, Om Malik).

Somehow, I can’t help but think that there is a huge disconnect here. How can I bring the message of mobile2.0 here to Web 2.0? Is it even important to do so? I’ve had a few conversations here and so far people seem receptive to the mobile Web message.

Tags: web2summit mobile mobile2event mobileweb mobile2.0

Filed by Daniel Appelquist at 17:14 under Mobile Monday, Mobile Web

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The Web2.0 conference is fast approaching. Once again, we will hear industry leaders like Jeff Bezos, Ray Ozzie and Vint Cerf ruminate on the future of the Web. But where, amongst all the trendy social network and media sharing hipsters, can you hear about the intersection of the Web and the Mobile platform? On this topic, the conference program is strangely silent. Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s going to be a great event. I’m going to be there and I am sure I will take away a lot from it, but what if you believe, as I do, that the future of the Web and the future of the mobile phone are integrally linked?

Enter … mobile2.0: the event.

Mike Rowehl (the organizer of Mobile Monday Silicon Valley) and I have been quietly putting this event together over the past month in an attempt to bring some Mobile thinking into “Web2.0 week.” We’ll be focusing on topics like the growth of the mobile Web / mobile Internet, open services, media sharing on the mobile, mobile widgets, mobile Ajax, content adaptation and disruptive innovations in the mobile space. Peter Vesterbacka, the creator of Mobile Monday Helsinki, will be running a segment called “Mobile Launch Pad” where we will showcase small company innovation in the Mobile Space.

It’ll be a day-long event, held at the Grand Hyatt San Francisco (near Union Square), starting with breakfast at 8:30 (a bit early I know, but we have a lot of material to get through!) and ending with a reception at the hotel. I’m very excited to report that we already have a star line-up of speakers and panellists for the event from all sectors of the industry.

If you’re interested in finding out more about the future of the Mobile platform then I urge you to register for the event and join us in San Francisco on the 6th!

Filed by Daniel Appelquist at 11:55 under Mobile Monday, Mobile Web

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It’s been an exciting week in the blogosphere for the Mobile Web. First Barbara Ballard posts part 1 of an article on “What’s Wrong with the Mobile Web.” This is followed up on by both Andrea Trassati and Mike Rowehl and then Tom Hume picks up on those posts. With so many respected individuals piping up on this issue, I could hardly have stayed out of the fray…

Actually, I’ve been saying for some time what Barbara essentially is saying in her post: mobile-specific user experience is essential the growth of the Web on the mobile platform. My vision of the “One Web,” however, encompasses this idea through the notion of (ta da) “thematic consistency,” which has been articulated nicely by the Mobile Web Best Practices working group. Thematic consistency does not mean you have to have the same page displayed across different devices — it allows for different user experience across different devices but asserts that the same URI when viewed on different devices should provide thematically similar results (for example, the same news article or blog post).

So — even though I hold Barbara in very high regard, I disagree with the articulation of the “two camps.” From my perspective, the two camps might be closer to “the browser can do it all” vs. “the content authors need to do something too.” Clearly, I’m in the second camp: Web sites need to start factoring in Mobile users when they design and build their services, not as an after-thought. I think this is already happening. Take a look at PinPPL — here’s a site that’s designed to work well on the Blackberry browser and on desktop browsers. The site itself, a social network for Blackberry users, also exploits device capabilities by providing direct access to Blackberry PIN messaging from user profiles.

By the way, Barbara will be speaking at the next Mobile Monday London event here on October 2nd. Don’t miss it!

Meanwhile, BBC News ran a great article on the rise of the Mobile Web. I think this article does a great job of capturing the user attitude towards the mobile Web: they just want it to work. (This article also reinforces my view that cost transparency is a key issue when it comes to take up.)

Filed by Daniel Appelquist at 20:20 under Blogs, Mobile Monday, Mobile Web

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There was a great article in today’s Herald Tribune (my “lifeline” to the US) on the very timely topic of Mobile Advertising. Why timely? Because the next Mobile Monday London event (run with and Sponsored by the MMA) will focus on this very topic. I especially liked this article because it focuses on companies that are going beyond SMS advertising and bringing Web-style banner ads and other innovations to the mobile. You may ask why, as a technologist, I am so excited about the prospect of mobile advertising? Well — look at it this way: advertising is the engine that is powering innovation in companies like Yahoo! and Google right now. If we can bring more targeted advertising to the mobile platform, in a way that preserves user privacy and choice, I believe it will lead to greater investment in the mobile platform by content providers and therefore more sophisticated applications and services being available over this platform.

Filed by Daniel Appelquist at 23:42 under Mobile Monday, Mobile Web

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