The ReadWriteWeb Mobile Summit got its nerd on in Mountain View, CA on Friday. Firing up the unconference engine in the Computer History Museum, the ReadWriteWeb staff entertained a full house of what Jason Harris called "the thinkers and do-ers inside the companies who are innovating in the mobile space."
What did the attendees and press think about the summit? One thing that struck me reading through the coverage was that each writer seemed to find a specific topic to be dominant, though none of them were the same. Perhaps the unconference is a good format to give participants a sense of focus on the things they value the most.
Here's a representative sampling.
The Mobile Summit was very conversational...topics sometimes deviated and this was perfect. The sessions ended up being active exchanges of ideas. Sometimes they were educational and even a bit confrontational. HTML5 was a major theme I was interested in and the drawbacks of various platforms including iPhone and Android.
It was a long day filled with dozens of group sessions and countless ideas, but there was a recurring theme that permeated many of my discussions: the long shadow of Apple (and often, other internet giants, like Google and Microsoft) and how it's rivalries will impact the developer community.
Taly Weiss on Trendspotting blog
Richard MacManus, Marshall Kirkpatrick and others from the incredible RWW team gathered a mixed group of start-ups, entrepreneurs, developers, journalists, marketers and researchers, who are not only experimenting with mobile innovations, but are taking an active part in this revolution. While the topics of interest were freely suggested, it came by no surprise that Augmented Reality enjoyed most of the attention.
Renee Blodgett on Down the Avenue
Unconferences are really great because you can create a session about something you know a lot about on-the-fly, or sit in on a topic where you don't, but still contribute from your own perspective and world, which is often more valuable to the group than you might think...ReadWriteWeb's second unconference -- focused on Mobile -- was held yesterday at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View. They had two main tracks at their Mobile Summit: Development and Business.