Mobile Monday Silicon Valley

Essential details for the October Mobile Monday:

There are a few different efforts aimed at making mobile web apps work offline. Gears already has a Windows Mobile version and is looking to expand, the OMTP BONDI effort is aiming to standardize mobile web apps and mix in persistent storage in the process, and WebKit has implemented the client side database storage section of the HTML5 spec. I learned about another effort from Oracle called AtomDB from CEO when he did an Austin MoMo on the topic. And then Gregory pointed me at Nikunj after running into him at a conference. And then I ran into Nikunj myself at Mobile Web Megatrends in Berkeley last month, and he’s a wellspring of knowledge about building intermittently connected web applications for mobile devices. I decided to take Enrique and Gregory’s advice and invite him to present at MoMo.

AtomDB is a method for delivering intermittently connected web applications to mobile devices by building on top of existing feed technologies (the Atom protocol) and builds on top of the caching semantics already built into and mature in the HTTP standards (the operations are PUT, POST, GET, DELETE, just as in any other web app). For some advance details about the discussion check out this thread on the W3C mailing list. Should be a particularly timely and relevant discussion, hope to see you all there!

- Mike

I’ve got a bunch of emails from folks asking if there’s going to be a September MoMo. I feel bad skipping it after having just skipped August. But the timing just doesn’t work out. Check this out:

Do you really need another event to attend? You know you’re just looking for another excuse to avoid getting work done ;-)

Every one of those events will have great info and a critical mass of the decision makers and practitioners necessary to make it a successful outing. Throwing another meeting into the mix would just peel off a percentage of attendance from other events and end up decreasing the value on the whole. I like to think of Mobile Monday as more respectful of the environment, standing up and making some noise when we need to, and letting things roll along on their own when they’re already doing well.

We’ll definitely be back October with a business themed event. And Daniel, Gregory, Rudy, Peter and I are cranking away on the lineup and setup for the next Mobile 2.0 conference on Nov 3rd (details should be available soon). So no, we’re not going away. I haven’t given up, something I seem to be getting asked a lot in emails. I just want to make sure that each and every event is quality and has a purpose. A bunch of dedicated people give up a big chunk of their Monday evening to attend, I want them to always come away from the events feeling they spent their time wisely.

- Mike

We’re back for July!!! Coming fresh off a three day 4th of July weekend everyone should be energetic and revitalized. Here are the essential details for the meeting:

There’s been a lot of talk about analytics for mobile properties, and more numbers are making it out into public forums for wider scrutiny. We’ll hear from a few different folks helping to make that happen: AdMob will give a demo of their new analytics offering, Opera will share some about the motivation and learning that’s come from the State of the Mobile Web Report. We’ll also have a panel discussion moderated by Matt Marshall from VentureBeat. The goal is to try to pull some overall understanding of how the mobile web is progressing, and what a publisher can do to understand their position and role in the market as a whole.

The folks from VentureBeat helped me put together the plan for this month’s meeting and worked out the details for the meeting space. They have a conference of their own coming up at the end of July that looks like it should be fantastic. I already posted to my personal blog about it, but here’s some info about the conference directly from them:

We have something a bit different planned for the May event this year. Instead of a set of presentations we’re going to have a panel discussion focused on issues commonly faced when running a mobile business. Details:

This should serve as a good preview of the kinds of topics we’re going to be hitting at the Mobile 2.0 event this year. We’re bringing together a bunch of folks who have been working in and involved with the industry for a long time to help “map the minefield” that is doing business in the mobile ecosystem. How do you make the decisions around how to bring your service to market? Who are all the players that get involved and how do you handle them? As well as some case studies from past and present companies that we can have discussions around. Thanks to the organizers of the event, who we’ll be hearing from the day of:

And many thanks to Microsoft for providing the meeting space and food. Hope to see you all there! - Mike

The March 2008 meeting of the Silicon Valley chapter is going to be on the 10th, hosted at Google. The topic is going to be automotive applications, with presentations from BMW about their connected car initiative and Dash showing off the API for their Internet connected navigation system. Here are the details: