Over The Air 2010 in London – One of Europe’s largest mobile developer events!

Last Friday our representation of the Academic Team at Microsoft (including Ben Nunney & Rafal Kwiek) visited the Over The Air event at Imperial College London. Over the Air is part of the larger Mobile Monday London – a community of around 3,500 individuals with a common interest in mobile communications & data founded in November 2005. This year the conference took place on September 10th and 11th – with the first day packed up to the full with some cool workshops followed by an overnight Hackathon and even more cool sessions. You can find the full schedule here.

Upon registration our team headed off to the Great Hall in Sherfield Building where we were welcomed by the team of the organisers (Daniel Appelquist & Matthew Cashmore). Due to the big crowd there was hardly any room left – fortunately enough we met there Paul Foster (Enthusiast Evangelist) who was preparing for a Windows Phone 7 workshop session in the afternoon.

Following the first keynote about “The Art of Emotional Design” by Aral Balkan there was a range of workshop sessions to choose from. Our team decided to go for the one entitled “HTML5 on Mobile” by Bruce Lawson from Opera Software. It was a fantastic opportunity to gain an insight into this innovative technology as seen from the perspective of a web browser provider. The session covered both the new features of HTML5 and CSS3 in action!

Later on, over the lunch break we thought it would be interesting to survey the attendees of the conference to find out what they think about the event in general, what sessions they took part in and with regards to the main theme – what their opinions are with regards to the following three questions: 1) What will the next big thing in mobile be.2) How to get students involved with app dev.3) What one application they’d like to see.

Finally – we were lucky enough to find a bit of free time of Paul Foster and have him answer a few interesting questions about the Windows Phone 7 platform. In case you were wondering how to get started with app dev for WP7 or still unsure how this scheme works – this interview will provide you with all the answers. Make sure to check it out below!

 

 

Overall, the Over The Air event was a fantastic opportunity to get involved with a like-minded community of mobile enthusiasts – especially by taking part in the overnight Hackathon. It is an annual event so if this time next year you will be free make sure to register your interest on their official website: https://www.overtheair.org/ ! :-)