Wow. Just....wow...

That was The Big M 2011.

It was a rollercoaster of talks, conversation, food, drink - and amazing, amazing people. So if you came, talked, helped, watched, contributed or tweeted - thank you. 

We're still tidying up the website, and shortly hope to have videos of the talks available online - but it all takes a little while so please bear with us.

Meanwhile, here are some bits and bobs that we've spotted - it's almost certainly not a complete list so if you know of more, please email us at help @ thebigm dot mobi, chuck us a tweet to @bigmconf or just tweet it yourself and use the hashtag #bigmconf

Blog posts:

Kelvin Gan

http://blogs.bath.ac.uk/webservices/2011/03/22/the-big-m-conference-the-talks
http://blogs.bath.ac.uk/webservices/2011/03/22/the-big-m-conference-a-review

Blue Via

http://blog.bluevia.com/2011/03/22/event-report-the-big-m

Vodafone

http://developer.vodafone.com/blog/2011/03/22/big-m-event-update

David Simpson

http://davidsimpson.me/2011/03/23/the-big-m-conference-bath

Round-ups:

Martin Couzens did an excellent job for us on the day (thanks Martin!) - and has posted some articles as well as Audioboo interviews with speakers. See them at http://www.itsdevelopmental.com/the-big-m/ 

Lanyrd is - as always - totally awesome at this kind of thing. See http://lanyrd.com/2011/bigmconf/ (follow links to "coverage" for slides etc)

Images:

Mark Power did us some amazing photos which you can find on Flickr tagged #bigmconf 

Special mention to Chris Day who spent the day sketching - these are ACE - thanks Chris! 

That's all for now - we'll be in touch, and thanks again for making this such a brilliant day.

The Big M team

Here's some useful info if you attending The Big M

THE BIG M'S BIG QUESTIONS

We would love to learn more about you. If you have two minutes please fill out our simple online questionnaire. At the end of it we ask you to let us pass on your details to our partners. It's up to you of course :)

http://thebigm.wufoo.com/forms/the-big-ms-big-questions/

NAME CHANGES

We will be sending our passes to print very soon so if you need a name change don't forget to login to Amiando and update your booking. If you get stuck just email help@thebigm.mobi and we'll get right back to you.

PRE EVENT SOCIAL

We thought it would be fun to let you pick up your pass the day before the event. The Big M team will be taking residence at The Cork from 7pm on the evening of Sunday 20th March. Join us for a drink, pick up your pass and meet fellow attendees.

COLLECTING YOUR PASS

If you can't make it on Sunday don't worry. You will be able to collect your pass and grab some breakfast from 9.00am on Monday 21st March at Komedia. The venue is in the heart of Bath and easy to find. 

http://bit.ly/bigm-komedia

PARKING IN BATH

If you are planning on driving to Bath for The Big M then we recommend you use the Charlotte Street car park. It's around £8 for a whole day and only a short work to the venue. The link below will show you your options.

http://bit.ly/bigm-parking

HOTELS IN BATH

If you are staying in Bath for the event and haven't sorted out your accommodation here are a few hotels to choose from.

• Three Abbey Green Guest House - From £90 - £145
• Best Western Abbey Hotel From £60 - £80
• The Halcyon - From £99
• Parade Park - From £50 
• Hilton Bath City - From £60
• Travelodge Bath Centre - From £60
• The Royal Hotel - From £70
• Haringtons Hotel - From £80

In just one week (!!) we'll be kicking off The Big M here in lovely Bath.

Things are looking pretty blinding from where we're sitting - speakers are lined up with some exceptional talks, venues are booked, passes are being printed..

More to the point, a bloody great lovely bunch of YOU are coming along - and without you (as someone once said) this whole thing is but a dream. So thank you for booking - and if you haven't yet, you really should do it now :-)

Just to give you a flavour, I've just scanned through the list of people attending and dug out a few random company names.

The list includes - of course - our fantastic sponsors: O2, Vodafone and Nokia...

...it includes other international companies like Everything Everywhere, Prudential, Opera and Estee Lauder...

...it includes local firms such as Analog, 3Sixty, Future Publishing and Mubaloo...

...not to mention a vast collection of freelancers, creatives, academics and others...

Chris and I are absolutely loving this mix - and we're really excited that you'll all be able to hang out together between talks and chew the mobile cud.

Two more things before I go - first off, I'm absolutely delighted to announce that Keir Whitaker has agreed to come on board to help us out with logistics in this final week running up to the conference. Keir has a huge amount of experience putting together this kind of thing in his previous role at Carsonified, and as a close friend I'm delighted to welcome him on board.

Lastly - if you have already booked, please don't forget to fill in our Big M's Big Questions form - it'll really help our Developer Connect partners. Thanks!

"Each month, 4.2 million consumers visit UK retail websites using a mobile"

This figure from the Internet Advertising Bureau, a while back in August 2010.

On a previous post I picked up on another stat in this research - that 41% of retailers plan to have a transactional mobile site or application in place during 2011.

The question is (without sounding like too much of a pimp...) - are you ready for it?

Your agency or freelance concern might already be knocking out nice looking, functional sites for your clients, but do you know what you need to know about mobile?

How about stuff like:

• mobile usability
• the mobile web
• html5
• windows 7 development
• iphone design principles
• app distribution and monetisation

If the answer is "no" or "um" or "kinda" - or if you just want to meet some of the major players from the industry, you need to get your tickets for The Big M. 

This two-day blinder of a conference is in less than a month. Don't panic, but be quick... :-)

Read more / book em up here >>>

The totally marvellous Bruce Lawson is giving a conference session at The Big M entitled: "Breaking out of the 'Walled Garden': HTML5 and open technology for mobile development". Hear him speak - book now >>>

Bruce answered our 5 questions a little bit like this:

1. What is your day job?

I evangelise Open Standards for Opera

2. What do you do outside of work, in your 10% time, or when your boss isn't looking?

 Outside work I do kickboxing, play guitar and read poetry, now writing an HTML5 book isn't consuming all my time.

3. How is the world of mobile going to change in 2011 and beyond?

The Open Web Stack will become more powerful, so the need for walled garden Apps will diminish. I will be remember which pocket my phone is in, and learn to answer a call before the caller has rung off.

4. What are you passionate about?

My family; The Open Web;  proper beer; proper music; modernist poetry and Elizabethan drama.

5. What's your desert island phone: iPhone, Android or other - and why?

Android all the way. (If I'm spending hundreds of pounds on some hardware, I want to install whatever I like on it. Even Adobe Flash or (gasp) things that can access porn). Running Opera Mini for speed, and Opera Mobile for features.

Its been a momentous day already for mobile announcements. Nokia are joining forces in a big way with Microsoft. Nokia needed to make a big change with their operating systems platforms, as their CEO Stephen Elop said it in his 'leaked' memo earlier in the week.

Cynics expected a single Nokia WP7 device to be announced but instead the announcement was huge and wide ranging. Windows Phone 7 (WP7) will be the primary operating system of Nokia smartphone devices (read "all devices in about 18 months", IMO). Here is the announcement in full. To give him his due Mr Elop really has some balls; he has joined Nokia as the first CEO from outside of Finland and has made some major changes straight away - very decisive.

What does it mean for developers?

This gives some clarity and some consolidation in the mobile ecosystem. @m1ke_ellis discussed this earlier when he guest blogged over on boagworld about how complicated it is for people just starting in mobile to undeerstand what platform to develop for. The announcement today means less fragmentation.

There are 4 main platforms with significant market share for app developers to consider:

• Android from Google
• Blackberry OS from RIM
• iOS from Apple
• WP7 from Microsoft with devices from Nokia

With 2 native platforms of interest that you need to keep an eye on in case they make inroads:

• webOS from HP (ex Palm)
• Bada from Samsung

There is also an opportunity for web developers wanting to create excellent experiences on mobile. If all of the platforms above have excellent browsers with HTML features support and w3c API's enabled then the mobile web can become a way of easing the fragmentation that still exists. Unless I missed it there was very little information about browser capabilities and roadmap on WP7 Nokia phones.

There is of course an opportunity for widget runtimes to work across a more consolidated smart-phone market.

Exciting times in Mobile, here's to all the new announcements in Barcelona next week.

2011: the year of the mobile :-)

Chris

HP yesterday announced what they are doing with WebOS following their purchase of Palm last year.

What do the announcements mean for HP and the wider Super-phone and Tablet markets?

I think its an interesting development. In our technology circles we all love to reminisce about Palm. "Do you remember that text adventure game where you were a drug dealer....." someone said to me as if thinking back to their Commodore or PS1. 

It's not all about early adopter techies though. HP need to convert mass-market consumers of devices to create a foothold in the smartphone and tablet market. Once that foothold is in place and they are reaching a critical mass; that's when developer interest will increase. There is a pre-requisite though; that the development tools from HP for webOS development are the best around. 

If they can get a significant number of devices out there to create an app market, and the mighty developer organisation that is HP can provide the right tools for mobile developers, then webOS could become a contender in this massively fragmented market (but let's leave fragmentation and the role of the web for another post)...

Developer mindshare is the interesting part of all this and because of HP's history and our fond memory of Palm, developers could get on board this platform and it could challenge Apple and Google operating systems for dev mindshare.

----

Chris Book

Dan is running our panel session: "The Future of the web, the open mobile web".

He answered our deeply penetrating questions like this...

1. What is your day job?

I have many hats. My title is “Web & Internet Evangelist” inside of Vodafone Group R&D. I represent Vodafone in the W3C where, among other things, I sit on the Technical Architecture Group (TAG) - kind of a technical steering board for Web standards: http://www.w3.org/2001/tag;

I’m leading an open source project to invent the future of social networks: http://onesocialweb.org; Until December of last year, I have been co-chair of the W3C Mobile Web Best Practices group, a group that has just closed after producing its final deliverable, guidelines for mobile Web Application developers: http://www.w3.org/TR/mwabp.

2. What do you do outside of work, in your 10% time, or when your boss isn't looking?

I am a dad to two wonderful children and a husband to a lovely and very understanding woman. I also like a good martini.

3. How is the world of mobile going to change in 2011 and beyond?

I have been working since 2004 on something called the mobile Web. In 2004, people used to look at me funny when I said “mobile Web.” Now, the mobile Web is mainstream, but we’ve seen some interesting counter-currents – closed app stores, closed ecosystems.

In the mean time, we have new categories of Internet-connected devices: tablets, gaming consoles, TVs and the battle between proprietary, closed ecosystems and the open Web is being fought out on these new battlefields.

I think 2011 will be a year when we will see amazing new capabilities come to the open Web – capabilities that will in some ways blur the lines between Apps and the Web. The current trend towards openness will continue, and by the end of 2011, we won’t be asking the question “apps or the Web” any more – it’ll be the Web, but not as we know it.

4. What are you passionate about?

I’m passionate about openness, transparency, the power of open source and the power of open standards – to change the way we communicate, consume / produce information and think of each other – to lift us up, socially, economically, politically.

I’m passionate about ensuring my kids grow up in a world where that kind of openness continues to proliferate. I’m passionate about the idea that we are in the infancy of the Internet age.

5. What's your desert island phone: iPhone, Android or other - and why?

Hopefully an Iridium phone so I can call someone to get me off of that island! Baring that, I would be happy with either Android or iPhone – as long as it’s jailbroken.

Mobile growth figures in the 1st world are huge. In the developing world, they're astronomical.

This piece from the Economist in 2009 (remember way back then...?) reveals the extent to which the developing world is climbing on the mobile bandwagon. "Mobile money" blazes the way in many of these countries:

By far the most successful example of mobile money is M-PESA, launched in 2007 by Safaricom of Kenya. It now has nearly 7m users—not bad for a country of 38m people, 18.3m of whom have mobile phones.

M-PESA first became popular as a way for young, male urban migrants to send money back to their families in the countryside. It is now used to pay for everything from school fees (no need to queue up at the bank every month to hand over a wad of bills) to taxis (drivers like it because they are carrying around less cash). Similar schemes are popular in the Philippines and South Africa.

This hasn't been without controversy, and commentators watch to see where this will all go. Totally without question, however, is the rate of change in these countries: 

From another Economist piece:

In 2000 the developing countries accounted for around one-quarter of the world’s 700m or so mobile phones. By the beginning of 2009 their share had grown to three-quarters of a total which by then had risen to over 4 billion 

Ok, we've gone Thank **** It's Friday bonkers again.

This time our (frankly ridiculous) offer goes a bit like this:

1. A full day Big M conference pass

AND

2. A full day Big M workshop pass

AND

3. A digital copy of the amazing O'Reilly "Programming the Mobile Web"

Normal price for all this lot: £300 

BUT...as it's Friday (and we like a Friday), the next ten people who book at thebigm.mobi using the special code TFIFWSEBOOK get all of this for £179.

There are ten tickets only. Run. Run like the wind and BOOK NOW > 

Thank you so much to Maximiliano and O'Reilly for getting in touch and giving us ten copies of the book!