I hope you managed to have an enjoyable summer break.  With the end of the summer holidays comes conference season…

At the 4G Wireless Evolution conference next week in LA I’ll be moderating the session “The Ecosystem of Application Developers” (4G1-04), on Tuesday 1st Sept, 2:00-3:15pm.  On the panel will be:
Shai Berger, CEO Fonolo;
Ben Levy, CEO Apex Voice
TS Ramakrishnan, CTO Bubble Motion;
Francisco Kattan, Sr. Director Developer Ecosystem Alcatel Lucent; and
Karl Good, Technical Director Truphone.

All panel members bring extensive scar tissue from working with operators.  Though there’s an idealized image of some geek working in the back bedroom creating applications; the vast majority are created by developers such as these panelists.

I’ll be opening with the question, ‘If you could have one wish to make working with a operator easier, what would that wish be?”  We’ll then open up into a broader discussion on: Who are these mysterious appliation developers? What do they need? What are their preferences amongst all the developer communities: Apple, Nokia, RIM, Android, Microsoft, AT&T, Verizon, Ericsson, Alcatel Lucent, Rogers, O2, Vodafone, Joint Innovation Labs, etc? What are their experiences in working across the many different communities? Why haven’t operator development communities achived the engagement of Apple’s App Store? Is service exposure relevant to developers? Can operators charge for service exposure in consumer services? What should operators do to better engage with developers?

At the Broadband World Forum in Paris 7-9 Sept I’ll be running the session “Stimulating Service Innovation through the Application Developer Community: Open Innovation” on Wednesday, 9 Sept form 09:30  – 11:00.  On the panel will be:
Varun Arora, CEO Home Camera (who are also shortlisted for an award at the BBWF conference);
Steve Glagow, VP Marketing Operations Orange;
Thomas Howe, CEO The Thomas Howe Company;
Ben Levy, CEO APEX Voice;
Sean O’Sullivan, CTO Dial2do;
Gil Rosen, VP Strategic Initiatives Amdocs;
Ian Valentine, CEO, Miniweb; and
Ty Wang, Senior Director, Product Management Oracle.

This session is more of a mix between voice 2.0, web 2.0 and TV 2.0 developers, the middleware suppliers that enable developers and operators to work together, and poor Steve Glagow representing the operator community 🙂  Again I’ll be opening with the question, ‘If you could have one wish to make working with a operator easier, what would that wish be?”  The discussion will be broader driving down in the best practices and problems in mobile, broadband and IPTV silos.

Operators around the world are adopting the Web 2.0 paradigm to harness internet service innovations onto their networks, e.g. Verizon’s Open Developer Initiative, BT’s aquistion of Ribbit, O2 Litmus, and Vodafone’s Betavine, commonly referred to as Telco 2.0. This session will discuss with some leading ‘2.0’ developers what they need from an operator’s application developer community to enable mutual success. Questions: What is meant by Telco/Web 2.0? What is the state of current service provider Telco 2.0/Web 2.0 activities? What capabilities can telcos expose that Web 2.0 companies need? What are Web 2.0 companies doing today to bypass the telcos for various service enablers? Where is the money to be made by telcos and application developers working together? What are good and bad practices in application developer communities?

And finally in Stockholm on the 15th Sept at the Oracle SDP in Action event, I’ll be presenting on the “The Business Case for Opening up the Network.”  I hope we get a chance to meet at one of these conferences.