Mobile is now ubiquitous, isn’t it? And we have all become used to the idea that it reaches into every corner of our lives, haven’t we? So we’re instantly on call and can access our office data and email everywhere all from the convenience of our own mobile device.

While mobility is a boon to the self-employed and to people running small businesses, it creates a fair number of challenges that tend to be noticed sooner by larger, and certainly by enterprise companies. Answering those challenges is an opportunity, potentially, for app developers and service providers alike.

Employees are now likely to have their own computers and mobile devices and may well have chosen them for virtues of usability, friendliness of interfaces, access to software that would not be permitted on office equipment, even if it was provided. The security issues abound, and even for small companies a Pandora’s box of issues is thrown open. And it’s not just software and devices. Many of us enjoy the freedom of hooking up our devices to cloud services, Dropbox is a favourite, and many may be tempted by the convenience of sharing work files using services like that. But having done that, the data genie is out of the bottle.

There are very many trade offs that are involved both on the employers side and the employees side in either allowing users to choose their own devices or on the other side allowing your employer to intrude on your personal time and space.

Together with our event partners, ICT KTN , we’re going to explore those issues at our next event on Monday 15th April. Chaired by MoMoLo regular and security and standards industry maven David Rogers, of Copper Horse, who will be joined by a leading panel of experts representing a wide range of views on everything from device security, to implementation of BYOD in a corporate environment.

Panelists will include:
*Caroline Maloney from Telefonica
* Charles Brookson of Azenby
* David Arnold from BlackBerry
* Gemma Coles from Mubaloo

As usual there should be plenty of lively debate and opportunities for the community to voice our opinions, no matter what sector we consider ourselves to be in. The event is free to attend, but registration is required and registration is now open at Eventbrite.

Mobile Monday London in partnership with ICT KTN is pleased to announce the return of Demo Night on 21st January 2013!

If you’re not familiar with the demo night format, well, it looks like this. Each of roughly 10 participants gets to speak about their idea, product or service for exactly three minutes and field questions from the audience for a couple more minutes. There are no special qualifications, you may have a ready to roll product, you may have an interesting idea, you may be a large company or small company… check out last April’s demo night write up for an idea of what it is all about. Past demoers have gone on to do all kinds of interesting journeys, so we’ll ask a couple of them to talk about their experiences too.

Importantly, if you’d like to do a demo, then please fill in the form here asap. Lots of past demoers have found the experience of having to put their message across in 3 mins very helpful, but even more helpful has been the feedback, encouragement and suggestions from members of the community that they get. Apply now! We will be closing applications to demo no later than 14 January.

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Agenda

6.00 Arrival

6.30 Demo night

8.00 Networking

9.30 Close

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As usual attendance is free, but Registration is Required and is now open.

Location

The CBI Conference Centre at Centre Point, the very tall building immediately above Tottenham Court Road tube station, on the Central and Northern Lines. Please use the entrance at street level under the bridge formed by the building itself.

Partners

We will share your registration details with our event partner ICT KTN.

It’s that time of year again – Mobile Monday London is seven, and as has now become the custom we’re going to be looking back over the events of the past year and looking forward to the next.

What’s not quite so traditional is that we are going to do this in the form of an unpanel.

That means a panel in which is made up of members of the audience and whose topics are the ones we, the audience, choose. So, bearing in mind that the topic is not really very restrictive we’re hoping for a very lively and varied debate.

To help us with the logistics of this, which is a first for us, we would appreciate if you’d drop us a note at contact@mobilemonday.org.uk to let us know that you’re keen to take the stage for one of the slots.

Agenda

6.00 Arrival

6.30 Unpanel

7.45 Networking

9.30 Close

As usual attendance is free, but registration is required and is now open.

Location

The CBI Conference Centre at Centre Point, the very tall building immediately above Tottenham Court Road tube station, on the Central and Northern Lines. Please use the entrance at street level under the bridge formed by the building itself.

Supporters

We are very grateful to our annual sponsors BlackBerry for supporting this event.

The UKTI MWC 2013 Stand Competition Live Final is on Monday 29th October in partnership with ICT KTN (http://ictktn.org.uk).

For the 5th year in a row working in association with ICT KTN, UK Trade & Investment (UKTI) and Cambridge Wireless we are pleased to invite you to the Mobile World Congress 2013 stand competition finals event.

At the final, each company gives a quickfire presentation (no Powerpoint) and is then questioned briefly by the panel of eminent judges.

The companies presenting are: Ringtrack Ltd, 51Degrees.mobi, MagicSolver Ltd, IC Mobile Lab Ltd, Distributed Management Systems Ltd, PixelPin Ltd, WMC Global Limited, Automatrics Limited, ROAMOBI Ltd, Aseptika Ltd.

After the presentations the judges will choose up to 3 companies from those presenting – the prize being not only space on the UKTI Stand at MWC but also stand branding, listing in the UK event directory, complementary exhibition passes and assistance with press and media activity to maximise the impact of being in Barcelona.

This has always been an exciting event, and discussions can rage as to whether the judges got it right – or not! Either way the prize is certainly worth winning, so come along and see who the lucky winners are …

Agenda

6.00 Arrival

6.30 Live Final

8.00 Networking (with light buffet)

9.30 Close

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As usual attendance is free, but registration is required and is now open.

Location

The CBI Conference Centre at Centre Point, the very tall building immediately above Tottenham Court Road tube station, on the Central and Northern Lines. Please use the entrance at street level under the bridge formed by the building itself.

Partners

We will share your registration details with our event partner ICT KTN.

On Monday 24th September, we see the return of this evergreen topic in our extremely popular annual discussion of HTML5 vs Native kindly supported by the folks over at Keynote DeviceAnywhere. We keep returning to this discussion because to live in mobile is to live in the fast lane! So it’s good to keep up with thinking and the trends that seem to keep changing the picture on an ongoing basis.

At our sell out event, last year, we debated the motion:

“This house believes that apps are the new ringtones and therefore have a limited shelf-life for long-term commercial gain”

and in a highly energetic and amusing debate, you, the community, decided in favour of the motion. Apps are dead, long live Web Apps!

Back then HTML5 was the new kid on the block, offering the promise of “write once run anywhere” and many of us enthusiastically espoused the dawning of a new era. A year and a bit later, how do we all feel about this?

Probably most of us still believe that in some time frame for some classes of application HTML5 does indeed offer the prospect and indeed does already provide a good answer to some clearly scoped and limited application use cases.

But in the light of over a year’s experience, some are saying that it’s not yet lived up to its promise and that although like the proverbial Chinese meal they felt full at the time, their hunger hasn’t been satisfied in the medium term and are sceptical about the long term. Perhaps, like other famous cross-device solutions both its promise and its readiness for market were over-stated. Insufficient specification, incomplete feature readiness, inconsistent order of implementation makes this an engineering bouillabaisse and does not provide the sort of commercial respite we were looking for.

So, reality has crept in, today HTML5 does not provide the ingredients for the kind of Michelin dining experience that is often needed. Instead, if you want a TV dinner, then it provides a Pot Noodles experience for consumption on the couch.

So this year, our motion is:

HTML5, far from being part of Gordon Ramsay’s larder is more likely to be used by Stavros at the corner chippie. Fine if you want chips. Do you aspire to be Gordon or are you content to be Stavros?

Chaired by the quirky, opinionated and even irascible Ewan MacLeod of Mobile Industry Review, and joined by two teams of leading debaters including Andrew Betts (Director, FT Labs), Sam Arora (Business Development Manager, Keynote Systems – DeviceAnywhere Platform), Jose Valles (Head of BlueVia), Nick Barnett (CEO, Mippin), Alex Caccia (CEO, Marmalade) and Chris Book (CEO, Bardowl). We are looking forward to another lively, and possibly even riotous debate!

Agenda

6.00 Arrival

6.30 Introduction

6.45 Debate

8.00 Networking

9.30 Close

As usual attendance is free, but registration is required and is now open.

Location

The CBI Conference Centre at Centre Point, the very tall building immediately above Tottenham Court Road tube station, on the Central and Northern Lines. Please use the entrance at street level under the bridge formed by the building itself.

Sponsors

With thanks to our sponsors, Keynote Systems – DeviceAnywhere Platform.

Successfully marketing an app can mean a wide-ranging marketing strategy that begins well before your app is even live. With numerous tools (ranging from analytics to social media) available to help developers with discoverability of their app, we’ll be reviewing the options – what promotional methods work (and which don’t) and where developers should be focusing their efforts.

We’ll be discussing the various options in a panel session chaired by Tim Green (Executive Editor, Mobile Entertainment), who has been writing about mobile content since the market’s inception in 1999. Our panellists include Keith O’Brien (Head of Content Strategy, Samsung), Oded Ran (CEO, Touchnote), Richard Firminger (Managing Director, Flurry) and Paul Armstrong (Head of Social, Mindshare).

Agenda
- 6.00 Arrival
- 6.30 Introduction
- 6.45 Panel Session
- 8.00 Networking
- 9.30 Close

As usual attendance is free, but registration is required and registration is now open on EventBrite.

Location
The CBI Conference Centre at Centre Point, the very tall building immediately above Tottenham Court Road tube station, on the Central and Northern Lines. Please use the entrance at street level under the bridge formed by the building itself.

Sponsors
Thanks to our lovely annual sponsors, Samsung, for their ongoing support.

We’re delighted once again to be helping out with spreading the word and holding supporting events for Vodafone Smart Accessibility 2012. In short, there is a prize pool of EUR 200,000 across the four categories of Social Participation, Independent Living, Mobility and Wellbeing. These are prizes that are truly worth winning!

In support of this initiative we’re running four workshops for people to gain a more in-depth appreciation of these issues in partnership with other Mobile Monday Chapters in Europe throughout July and August 2012.

Entry is open from today & closes 15th October, full details: http://developer.vodafone.com/smartaccess2012/home/

Agenda:

2.30 – 3.00: Doors open

3.00 – 3.05: Introduction by Jo Rabin, Director, Mobile Monday London

3.05 – 3.15: Introduction to Smart Accessibility Awards 2012 by Jon Azpiroz, Vodafone Foundation Spain

3.15 – 4.00: User perspective and personal experience

This session gives you the opportunity to fully understand the challenges faced by users with disability needs preferences and the main barriers. The session will be run as a panel with 3-4 users who will share their personal experiences with mobile technology. Paul Carter (Co-Director, markthreemedia), Samantha Fletcher (Trustee of the Dyslexia Association of Bromley, Bexley, Greenwich and Lewisham), Alison Smith (Director/Founder of Pesky People) and Samantha Chrisnall (an avid web and mobile app user with a visual impairment).

4.00 – 4.45: Technical session with demonstration of tools and applications

See real life examples of mobile solutions that improve the accessibility of mobile devices. Assistive technologies such as screen readers or alternate text entry systems, accessible applications that have been developed with the design for all paradigm or mobile simulators will be presented. This will be an interactive session that will allow you to test these applications with several mobile devices and see how these technologies improve the quality of life with users with disabilities.

4.45 – 5.30: Simulation of disabilities and videos of user testing

Feel what it’s like to experience a disability through a simulation / video of user testing. Also get a chance to discuss how daily life with an impairment changes your design and testing practices.

5.30 – 6.00: Refreshments, networking and Q & A

As usual attendance is free, but registration is required and registration is now open.

Location

UCL Anatomy Building, Room B15, Gower Street, London, WC1E 6BT

Please not it’s NOT our usual Centre Point location

Sponsors

Vodafone Foundation

Mobilising the community, mobilising social change:

At the heart of our foundation is the belief that our mobile communications technologies can address some of the world’s most pressing humanitarian challenges and our responsibility is to utilise our innovative mobile technology in mobilising social change and improving people’s lives.

To achieve this objective the Vodafone Foundation invests in the communities in which Vodafone operates and is at the centre of a network of Vodafone’s global and local social investment programmes.

Globally, our Foundation makes social investments by funding projects which support disaster relief and preparedness including our Red Alert Programme, through projects which use mobile technology for the benefit of all, and via our unique World of Difference programme.

In countries in which Vodafone operates, our social investment is delivered by a unique footprint of 26 Vodafone Foundations and social investment programmes. These programmes are directed and chosen by the Foundation Trustees and receive funding from the Vodafone Foundation in the UK as well as their local Vodafone company.

ICT KTN

Many thanks to ICT KTN for their support.

UCL Advances

Many thanks to UCL Advances for their support.

We’ve been meaning to hold an event on this important topic for absolutely ages, and it’s an enormous pleasure to announce that we are now doing so to coincide with the launch of Vodafone Smart Accessibility Awards 2012.

It’s not just that inclusive design is virtuous, it seems clear to me that inclusive design is “good design” for everyone and is also commercially sensible design.

Yet for some reason this is not widely discussed in the context of mobile, but should be.

To help us understand this area more clearly Henny Swan (Senior Accessibility Specialist at the BBC) will make some introductory remarks to set the scene for us.

Following that we have a panel discussion chaired by Robin Spinks of the RNIB (Principal Manager, Digital Accessibility) and he’ll be joined by Henny Swan (BBC), Damon Rose (Ouch! Podcast producer & BBC News journalist), Suzette Keith (Usability and Accessibility Researcher & Visiting academic at Middlesex University) and Abdi Gas (FA Board, Disability Equality Advisory Group at the Football Association).

This year’s Vodafone Smart Accessibility Awards will follow the same format as last year’s extremely successful awards. With four prizes each of EUR 50k this is something you should be paying attention to and wonder why you are not entering if you are eligible! We’ll be hearing more about the awards at the event, so come and find out.

Registration and event details: http://momolondon-2012-06-11-y.eventbrite.co.uk/

Agenda

6.00pm Doors Open

6.30pm Introduction

- to Vodafone Smart Accessibility Awards 2012

- to Inclusive and Accessible Design by Henny Swan

6.50pm Panel Session

8.00pm Networking

9.30pm Close

As usual Mobile Monday London attendance is free and registration is now open - this should be a really interesting evening!

Location

University College London (Malet Place, London WC1E 6BT) in the Darwin Lecture Theatre

Nearest tube stations are: Euston Square, Goodge Street, Warren Street and Euston

Please not it’s NOT our usual Centre Point location

Sponsors

Vodafone Foundation

Mobilising the community, mobilising social change: At the heart of our foundation is the belief that our mobile communications technologies can address some of the world’s most pressing humanitarian challenges and our responsibility is to utilise our innovative mobile technology in mobilising social change and improving people’s lives.

To achieve this objective the Vodafone Foundation invests in the communities in which Vodafone operates and is at the centre of a network of Vodafone’s global and local social investment programmes.

Globally, our Foundation makes social investments by funding projects which support disaster relief and preparedness including our Red Alert Programme, through projects which use mobile technology for the benefit of all, and via our unique World of Difference programme.

In countries in which Vodafone operates, our social investment is delivered by a unique footprint of 26 Vodafone Foundations and social investment programmes. These programmes are directed and chosen by the Foundation Trustees and receive funding from the Vodafone Foundation in the UK as well as their local Vodafone company.

Many thanks to UCL Advances for their support.

Meanwhile: Looking forward to seeing lots of people Friday at Bletchley Park for Over the Air.

Till then or the 11 June..