Xconomy’s next big event, Mobile Madness: The New Future of Computing, is coming up fast—it’s on March 9 at Microsoft’s New England R&D Center in Cambridge.
Once again, the tech community has come out in force to support our event, and I have an amazing lineup of speakers to tell you about, as well as some new and unique segments like the “Mobile Smackdown.” More on all that in a moment.
At a high level, the point of this Xconomy forum is to explore the new reality that mobile technology is one of the central arenas, if not the central arena, for innovation in both consumer and business computing. More and more of the applications and services that companies want to offer to consumers and enterprises must be accessible from both mobile and desktop platforms. Meanwhile, mobile-only software and content is an exploding business all on its own. All of that creates enormous opportunities for innovation and entrepreneurship. Attendees will hear about the biggest opportunities and pitfalls in the mobile business as perceived by leaders from a range of successful local companies.
The Mobile Madness forum is one of the highlights of Mass Mobile Month, a celebration of mobile innovation throughout New England in March 2010. We encourage you to investigate and attend the many of the Boston-area mobile technology events listed at MassMobileMonth.com. And if you’re a mobile industry insider or fan and you’re planning to attend Mobile Madness or any of the month’s other events, we’d love to get your help promoting the initiative through social media; the Twitter hash tag for Mobile Madness is #xmobmad and the tag for Mass Mobile Month is #massmobmonth.
Who else will be at Mobile Madness? As always, our audience will consist of a rich mix of entrepreneurs, executives, developers, investors, and service providers from around New England. The last time we held a mobile event in the Microsoft space, in April 2009, we had a standing-room-only crowd of 225. We expect to sell out again this year, so register now.
We’re packing incredible variety into this five-hour event. Headlining the afternoon are six keynote speakers from leading global, national, and regional organizations. (The full agenda is online here.) First off we’ve got Jhonatan Rotberg, executive director of the MIT-based Next Billion Network, who will talk about the role mobile technology can play in solving social and economic challenges in the developing world. Then Kate Imbach, a key organizer at Mobile Monday Boston and vice president of marketing from Boston’s Skyhook Wireless, will walk us through the latest facts and figures on venture investment in the mobile technology sphere in New England.
Later in the program we’ll have a sequence of three more keynote talks from major companies active in the mobile industry. First, we’re delighted to welcome Anthony Kinney, a Windows Phone evangelist at Microsoft, who will talk about Microsoft’s plans for the Windows Phone 7 operating system. We’re also honored to have a team joining us from Cisco Systems, which recently acquired local wireless infrastructure networking company Starent Networks; we’ll be hearing about the company’s plans in the mobile business from
