Hear From Siri Co-Founder Adam Cheyer & More at Mobile Madness NW

We’re really excited to invite you to our next big Xconomy event in Seattle, Mobile Madness Northwest, happening the afternoon of Dec. 12. And we’ve got a big name in the technology world to help us kick things off.

Adam Cheyer is one of three co-founders of Siri, the company behind the eponymous virtual personal assistant app that powers smart queries on Apple’s iPhone. His work with the technology starts way back when Siri was a project inside SRI International, a nonprofit research institute, before being spun out as its own venture.

Apple quickly saw the potential, gobbling up Siri in April 2010 for a reported price of $150 million-$250 million.

Cheyer, who was the chief technical architect behind Siri, is no longer with Apple—he confirmed to us last month that he had left the company for what he said were personal reasons.

But Cheyer says he’s still very bullish on its future with Apple. And on Dec. 12, we’ll welcome him to Seattle for a keynote discussion at this year’s Mobile Madness Northwest conference. Expect to hear some keen insights on the future of distributed computing, the challenges ahead for innovators in mobile, and the need for making today’s powerful devices and services easier for people to use.

This is the second year we’re hosting Mobile Madness in Seattle, and we plan on making things even bigger and better this time around. Get your tickets now to lock in the best rates, and make sure you check out our special prices for startups and students.

We’ve got a long list of really great speakers and panelists joining Cheyer at this Dec. 12 afternoon forum, which will run from 1 pm-6:30 pm at Town Hall in Seattle. You’ll also hear from:

—Chris DeVore, General Partner, Founder’s Co-op

—Boris Wertz, Founding Partner, Version One Ventures

—Alex Samano, General Manager, Bobsled by T-Mobile

—Doug Aley, Vice President, Zulily

—Mary Jesse, Founder & CEO, Ivycorp

—Scott Kveton, Co-founder & CEO, Urban Airship

—John Lauer, Founder & CEO, Zipwhip

—Josh Marti, Co-founder & CEO, Point Inside

—David Shim, Founder & CEO, Placed

—Maria Zhang, Founder & CEO, Alike

We’ll be adding more speakers in the next few weeks, and look out for some profiles and interviews with our participants to preview some of the big ideas we’ll be tackling.

But pick up your tickets now for this half-day conference with some of the best minds and biggest innovators in the Northwest and beyond, tackling the huge changes being wrought by the spread of mobile computing. You don’t want to miss it.

Author: Curt Woodward

Curt covered technology and innovation in the Boston area for Xconomy. He previously worked in Xconomy’s Seattle bureau and continued some coverage of Seattle-area tech companies, including Amazon and Microsoft. Curt joined Xconomy in February 2011 after nearly nine years with The Associated Press, the world's largest news organization. He worked in three states and covered a wide variety of beats for the AP, including business, law, politics, government, and general mayhem. A native Washingtonian, Curt earned a bachelor's degree in journalism from Western Washington University in Bellingham, WA. As a past president of the state's Capitol Correspondents Association, he led efforts to expand statehouse press credentialing to online news outlets for the first time.