The newsletter is really late this month.  The intent is to get it out the first weekend of every month, and over the last 19 issues, we've been pretty on time. As a small business that is growing fast, we are in a period of optimizing activities based on resources - I'm sure many of you know what that is all about! 

 

CTIA was big fun with our 2^nd Mobile Jam Session - see the overview below for the highlights.  Thanks to all the participants and our speakers.  Thanks also to AT&T for having me moderate their panel on Monday nite and for taking us to see the Cirque's LOVE, it was fantastic.  It was also great to be one of the Fast Track Partners at the MotoDev event - we got great value out of being there, and I would encourage you to attend future ones for good information and lots of networking.  And of course, Andy Seybold's dinner is always full of really interesting, in the know people.  I come away from those dinners knowing more, overhearing some of the industry gossip, but realizing after 'only' being in the industry since 1995 I still know so little!

We attended Orange Partner Camp in Faro, Portugal, which is event I also like in part because I get to do business and wear flip flops the whole time.  But more importantly it's such a fantastic opportunity to get up close and personal with the many individuals in Orange France Telecom.  I haven't seen any other company come close to hosting this type of event. 

We made a special announcement at Orange Partner Camp about the launch of the WIP Leadership Council for Developer Programs - see more on this below.

Interesting tidbits gleaned over the last month include:

ˇ          Developers in Europe are more interested in open source than their North American counterparts

ˇ          Developers in North American are more interested in making money and getting to marketing schemes that their counterparts in Europe

ˇ          Most Mobile 2.0 developers still have a very limited appreciation of the complexities of wireless communications and device constraints.  Google and Apple are doing a good job of pointing out some paradigms that need to be changed, but it doesn't change the inherent latencies in using wireless spectrum, the costs required to operate a telecom network, the constraints of battery life etc. 

ˇ          LTE is riding a strong wave of support

ˇ          More and more of the industry are recognizing the crucial importance of developers in the innovation life cycle.  It's not just an afterthought anymore!

ˇ          'Developer' is a confusing term to many.  Some think it means the geeky one man in the garage, where to others it's the ISVs.  To us it encompasses all of these and others who are smaller, third parties developing applications or platforms, enterprise developers going wireless and new media companies joining the party!

Upcoming events for WIP include:

Java One  May 6-9 San Francisco. where we will be in the Mobility Pavillon showing the beta of our Mobile Developer Ecosystem Wiki (we still have to come up with a better name for this) which we hope will provide much a needed resource for the tools and services available to developers. We are developing this in partnership with Wavefront who wil be on hand too.

UIQ FastTrack events, May 15/16 - Boston and May 19/20 - San Francisco.  I'll be speaking at both events enlightening folks with my 'Dating Tips for Developers" based on a true story!

Hope to see you there.