{"id":14944,"date":"2011-09-03T09:59:09","date_gmt":"2011-09-03T17:59:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.wapreview.com\/?p=14944"},"modified":"2012-08-13T11:49:18","modified_gmt":"2012-08-13T18:49:18","slug":"mobile-2-0-event-highlights-design-workshops-and-encouraging-entrepreneurship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wapreview.com\/14944\/","title":{"rendered":"Mobile 2.0 Event Highlights – Design Workshops and Encouraging Entrepreneurship"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/a><\/p>\n I spent the day yesterday at Mobile 2.0<\/a> in San Francisco. \u00a0Great event as always. Highlights for me included Larry Berkin<\/a>‘s overview of the current and\u00a0future\u00a0device landscape, and Jame’s Pearce<\/a>‘s whirlwind tour of the capabilities of modern mobile browsers and the development tools and libraries for working with then.<\/p>\n A new feature of this year’s event were two interactive workshops that were part of the afternoon’s development\/design track. The workshops broke the audience up into teams to work on a problem.\u00a0One workshop gave teams 30 minutes to come up with a high level, context aware solution to a mobile design problem. \u00a0In the other workshop each team had to come up with the two biggest pain points in mobile web development. \u00a0Not surprisingly, lack of browser access\u00a0to device features (especially contacts, calendar and system-level alerts) showed up on most of the group’s lists. \u00a0I found the workshops\u00a0energizing\u00a0and a great way of getting the conference attendees thinking and interacting with each other.<\/p>\n <\/a><\/a><\/a><\/p>\n The bulk of the Mobile 2.0 presentations focused on the\u00a0opportunities\u00a0and challenges of developing and monetizing mobile content in a developed world where nearly everyone has a \u00a0smartphone running iOS or Android.<\/p>\n But one speaker who presented a\u00a0more global picture. That was Steve Bratt<\/a> from the World Wide Web Foundation<\/a> who talked about his group’s efforts to encourage mobile entrepreneurship in sub-Sahara Africa.<\/p>\n Steve’s message was that the web is a powerful tool for learning, communicating, political action, commerce, and for finding\u00a0essentials like health care and safe drinking water. Although the Internet is available in areas where three quarters of the world’s population lives, computers, less than a quarter actually do. \u00a0Most of the people who do not have Web access live in\u00a0the\u00a0developing world. In Africa, for example, the percentage of Internet use is less than 5%. The reasons are many including; cost, lack of\u00a0locally\u00a0relevant content, illiteracy or because their languages are not well supported on the web.<\/p>\n The World Wide Web Foundation, was created by Tim Berners-Lee in 2009. Its mission is to make the web free, open and increasingly powerful for all.<\/p>\n One of Foundation’s \u00a0projects is the Mobile Entrepreneurship Initiative,<\/em> which offers courses for local developers and would-be mobile entrepreneurs in Ghana, Senegal and Kenya. These are four week intensive labs that teach the basis of mobile and web technologies and business. The training is hands on, with teams of students designing and building mobile services as one of their assignments. The best projects \u00a0receive cash prizes. The initiative is funded by a $1 million grant from Vodafone but it aims to be self sustaining. The initial labs are taught by outside trainers but also train local trainers to carry on the project.<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n Image: World wide Web\u00a0Foundation<\/em><\/span>\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n The non-profit Foundation needs help to carry on and expand its work. Both\u00a0volunteers\u00a0and corporate and\u00a0individual\u00a0contributions<\/a>, which are tax deductible in the US and other countries, are needed.<\/p>\n .<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I spent the day yesterday at Mobile 2.0 in San Francisco. \u00a0Great event as always. Highlights for me included Larry Berkin‘s overview of the current and\u00a0future\u00a0device landscape, and Jame’s Pearce‘s whirlwind tour of the capabilities of modern mobile browsers and the development tools and libraries for working with then. A new feature of this year’s event were two interactive workshops that were part of the afternoon’s development\/design track. The workshops broke the audience up into teams to work on a … Continue reading