Over the Air 2009, London UK

They said it could not be done...

Sep. 29, 2009 05:45 AM

Last Friday I was lucky enough to stumble across and attend 'Over The Air 2009' in London's Imperial College, which was part of the London Digital Week 09.

They said it could not be done in this economy, a free event for 200+ developers with sessions on development, design etc... but the guys at OverTheAir.org created a successful 24 hours of Mobile Development. A two day event that also brought together some big sponsors...O2 were there, Orange were there, Vodafone were there, Microsoft were there, Nokia were there... Strangely Apple were not... Shame most attendees had iPhones and Macbooks! In fact it was the most that I had ever seen in one place... other than an Apple Store or an Apple event such as WWDC. The whole event had a really good buzz about it

OTA Keynote
Keynote speakers in order were...

Nick Allott CTO of OMTP who presented on the subject of Widgets and Mobile Apps and how they unlock the value of the cellular networks.
Rick Fant of Vodafone discussed applications, services & widgets for their customers. They have a new division Vodafone Internet Services. Rick also covered Vodafone 360, which is devices and services and was announced the day before the event.
Caroline Lewko, CEO, WIP had a great presentation titled... It's Raining App Stores! Surviving the App Storm. WIP specialize in connecting developers to the ecosystem. Sybase a WIP Partner/Customer
Finally the BBC presented, yes The British Broadcasting Corporation talking about 'the future is Mobile'.

Many presentations followed as well as a few competitions/coding jams. Check out http://overtheair.org. A few of the presentations that I attended had good messages that can be summed up in a number of sentences.

Architecture & Design is important for your Mobile Developments, more than ever before.
Try to target as many Mobile Platforms for your Mobile Development.

I think they need to look at the Mobile Enterprise Application Platform Strategy. Check out the MEAP group on LinkedIn

Check out other folks thoughts at Twitter, with the tag #ota09 as well as the Flickr picture pool

Published Sep. 29, 2009— Reads 3,053
Copyright © 2009 SYS-CON Media, Inc. — All Rights Reserved.
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About Ian Thain
As one of the Sybase Technical Evangelists, Ian regularly addresses technical audiences all over the world and his sessions are always very well attended. He also writes education classes, whitepapers, demos and articles for various Sybase products and publishes regularly in Journals such as SYS-CON's PBDJ and International Developer Magazine. He is also the Sybase Unwired Platform & PocketBuilder Evangelist and works closely with the team in Dublin, CA and Concord, MA on new features and demonstrations for the products. He is also Tech Chair of iPhone Development Summit 2009 - New York (June) and San Francisco (November). In his customer-facing Evangelist role, Ian is very involved with the design, production and testing of Enterprise class Unwired Solutions, that have been implemented using Sybase's Unwired tools for Sybase customers around the globe. In addition, Ian is a dedicated technical expert continually working with Sybase's key partners and clients to enhance the capabilities of the Unwired solutions that Sybase can offer to its customers. Ian can also be found on Twitter @ithain

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