Conferences & Events

I attend and speak at as many mobile/internet conferences and events as I can, while still managing to get some real work done. It’s good for business to attend events, great to discover the fantastic stuff that people are creating and of course usually a lot of fun. I’ve been meaning to write a blog post about the ups & downs of conferences for some time, but until then, here are some of the events I’ve attended or spoken at in the last year or two:

• 140char, New York
  Jeff Pulvers leading twitter conference
• Being Digital, London (Spoken at)
• Chinwag Live (various), London (Spoken at)
• CTIA Wireless, San Francisco
• DLD, Munich
• European Semantic Web Conference (ESWC), Tenerife
• E-Tech, San Diego
• Fuel, London (Spoken at)
• Future of Mobile, London (Spoken at)
• Future of Web Apps, London
• Future of Web Apps, Miami
  fun, fiesty and one of the leading Web 2.0 conferences
• Le Web, Paris
• Lift, Geneva
  diverse conference with not-the-usual speakers, spanning much more than tech
• Location Based Services IIR, Amsterdam (Spoken at)
• m.Love
  an event for long-time passionate mobile disrupters – new conference coming soon!
• MEX, London
  the leading mobile usability conference; personal, rammed full of interesting people & quality content
• Mobile 2.0 Europe (spoken at)
  the main independent Mobile conference for apps, enterprise & consumer mobile services
• Mobile 2.0 San Francisco (Spoken at)
• Mobile Advertising, Amsterdam (Spoken at)
• Mobile Location Services, London, 12th & 13th May 2009 (Spoken at)
• Mobile Telematics & Navigation, Amsterdam (Spoken at)
• Mobile Web Summit 2.0, London (Chaired)
• Mobile World Congress (formally 3GSM – a much catchier name!), Barcelona (Spoken at)
  THE global mobile industry conference, with everything from cell-tower builders to handsets, MNOs and everything inbetween
  
• Plugg, Brussels growing fast
• Social Graphing Patterns, San Diego
• SXSW, Austin
  young, cutting edge and party-central in Texas USA
• The Next Web, Amsterdam (Sponsored)
  one of the best European conferences
• Under the Radar Mobile, San Francisco (Spoken at)
  an institution in Silicon Valley, the UTR conferences attract alot of attention

One of the two best European events are Lift and Boris & Patrick’s The Next Web, the latter held in Amsterdam. Ryans FOWA series is also very well attended and a great asset to the event calender, recently expanding with a UK tour of mini-FOWA events.

Social, Tech & Networking events

London tech scene in the last two years has really congeeled and picked up pace. There is a vibrant evening roster of events each month, some of the best IMHO being:

• Simon’s Mashup Events
• Helen Keehans mobile-centric legendary Swedish Beers
• the Huddle boys awesome Drink Tank (an absolute compulsory for any self respecting entreprenuer, tech angel or VC)
• and Paul Walshs’ Open Soho.