Notes from Mobile Camp Atlanta, July 2009

This past Saturday, I had a great time attending Mobile Camp Atlanta / iPhone Camp Atlanta. It worked out nicely holding these events at the same time, because there was a lot of cross conversation from people in each “camp”. ;)

Hats off to Jonathan Freeman of Widget Press as well all the other organizers. The logistics, sound systems and recording equipment were outstanding, as was the full catered continental breakfast. How’d you guys pull that one off?

Although this event was structured for the traditional barcamp style, there weren’t too many people signing up for sessions when they distributed the notecards around 8:15.  I don’t know if it was the topic area or the people in attendance,  but everyone just seemed to prefer to network rather than commit to a presentation. I held back from signing up for any talks for a while, but eventually I put a few on the board.

First, I did a talk on Microsoft Tag and how it’s the designer and marketers’ barcode. This was an interesting conversation to have, especially given the fact that everyone’s badge at the event had a QR code on it with their contact information. We talked about the pros and cons of having a tag be a pointer to online data versus being encoded right in the barcode. I also showed them the winners of the Tag Slaps contest that Microsoft held recently, illustrating how you can make cool looking tags that are still meaningful data-wise.

My second talk was on the recently announced Windows Mobile Marketplace and how mobile app developers can get in on the ground floor of the marketplace to get their Windows Mobile apps in front of millions of customers with ease. Very timely, considering the Marketplace is about to enter beta. We talked about the vetting process, what standards developers need to follow, and how to their apps hosted. Here’s a good video introducing Windows Marketplace for Mobile.

At the end of the event, I gave away a Samsung Jack, a copy of Visual Studio 2008 Professional, and a few mobile development books. The funny thing was the winner of the phone and I had just been talking previously about all the different choices, and he’d recently dropped his carrier and was searching for a new device/carrier. So there you go!

I had some great conversations during this event. I love showing up to these types of events, because I always meet cool people doing interesting things that otherwise I wouldn’t cross paths with.

Hopefully this will become an annual (some attendees were even wishing for 2 times a year) event, and we’ll see some bigger turnout by Windows Mobile developers next time. I’ll leave you with a few pictures of the event, where someone captured me presenting.

For the full set visit https://www.flickr.com/photos/mcordell/sets/72157621565529323/