Russell Beattie

This passed through my aggregator today:

Microsoft® Mobile Developer Conference 2004

Microsoft Mobile DevCon is the premier developer event for building and bringing to market mobile applications, content and services for the Windows Mobile and Windows platforms.

This is a must attend event for developers seeking knowledge about the latest platform advances for mobile technologies, including Windows Mobile-based Pocket PCs and Smartphones, .NET Compact Framework, SQL Server CE, ASP.NET, and MapPoint Location Server and other mobile technologies.

Hear from Microsoft Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates about Microsoft's new mobile technologies and long-term development strategies for mobile applications and devices.

This is the event that I saw last year that first got me aware of Bill Gates' incredibly long range thinking. I watched the streaming video of Bill show some neat new devices and talk about things to come in 5 years and how MS-based mobile products would leverage back-end MS infrastructures to better meet customer demand. It was the video with the Pepsi's mobile rollout, etc.

You know this year since the borg finally has some decent phones in production (or will be by the time March rolls around), they'll be stressing cellular technologies above all else with Windows Mobile 2003, .Net Compact, and the various Microsoft mobile phones all integrating seamlessly (or at least it will look like it in the demos) with Exchange and SQL Server in the Back Office.

It's interesting to see how they are integrating with MapPoint - that's a killer web service that Microsoft has and it looks like they're going to be using it as a lynchpin for mobile development. (The conference is "sponsered by" Mappoint).

May I say again, how nice it would be for Sun and Symbian to be holding this sort of high-profile event? Yes, I know the Symbian Exposium has technical sessions and JavaOne has many mobile-oriented sessions as well. However... compare those efforts to this from Microsoft (80+ technical sessions) and I think you'll agree with me that there's a need there for a separate, highly technical mobile-dev event which both teaches, inspires and organizes from either of those companies, no?

Anyways, as always, keep your friends close and your enemies closer.

-Russ