The Future of Mobile

We are excited to announce that Dave Burke from Google is going to be exclusively speaking at FOM about Google’s involvement with the Open Handset Alliance and the new mobile platform, Android. In a change to the scheduled talk on Gmail for mobile, this will be the first time Google has spoken publicly in Europe on the OHA and Android since its announcement on November 5th.

The Open Handset Alliance is a group of over 30 technology and mobile companies who have come together to build the first open platform for mobile, Android. You can find more information at the Open Handset Alliance site, where an early version of a Software Development Kit (SDK) will be available on November 12th.

You can read more on reactions to Google’s announcement at all the Guardian, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, TechCrunch and the BBC.

Dave Burke is an engineering manager within Google’s mobile team where he leads efforts across a wide range of application, infrastructure, and platform initiatives.

Prior to Google, Dave was a pioneer in driving the technology behind next generation interactive speech and video systems for the telecoms industry. Dave is editor of VoiceXML and related W3C and IETF standards and has authored a book on speech processing published by Wiley. Previously, Dave was the CTO and cofounder of Voxpilot. Dave holds a PhD, MEngSc and BE from University College Dublin, Ireland.

We look forward to welcoming Dave to the event, and for those of you who haven’t yet booked your seat, please note that there are only a small number still available.

We are pleased to announce that Tony Fish, author of the book Mobile Web 2.0 and renowned industry pundit, will be our keynote speaker at Future of Mobile. Tony has worked with numerous organisations on strategy and the implications of market change. He is known for his probing questioning, clear decision making, simple no-nonsense attitude and robust financial views.

The speaking schedule is now full. Thanks to all those who suggested speakers or put themselves forward for a slot.

We’re happy to welcome Marcus Foster, Product Manager for Gmail for mobile (Apps, XHTML, APIs), to the speaking schedule. Marcus focuses on building user-centric services and making them available around the world. He has worked in the Internet and mobile industries for more than 10 years. Prior to joining Google, he worked at Yahoo!, serving as head of mobile product for Europe and director of mobile messaging. He will talking on the subject of, ‘Gmail & the Next Generation of Mobile Web Apps’.

We have just confirmed that the speaker from Adobe will be Matt Millar, Director of Mobile and Devices EMEA. He will be speaking on ‘Next Generation UI’s’ - how they will be designed, how they will function and how you should expect people to use them.

Matt began this role after Adobe acquired Mobile Innovation, the company he co-founded in 2002 and of which he was CTO. Mobile Innovation was a leading designer, developer and integrator of user interface, user experience and software application platforms for mobile devices.

We’re really excited to have him as part of the line up for Future of Mobile.

We’ve been working hard to fill up the speaking line up with the best and most relevant people in the mobile web industry. We’re in discussion with speakers from:

• Gmail
• PayPal
• Adobe
• Sony Ericsson
• Opera

We hope to add these companies to line up over the next few days. In the meantime, please let us know which speakers you want to hear from and we will put them on our ‘dream speakers’ list (which is already too long!).