In November it was time for the annual invitation-only Möbius conference, and I was one of the very fortunate ones to be invited for this great event. The Möbius conference 2009  was held in Seattle, and I was very excited about my first visit to one of the top 10 tech cities in the world.   

In this article I will provide a short section with background information about Möbius, and than focus on this year’s Möbius conference and the discussed contents (which I’m allowed to share).  

What is Möbius ?

 For those of you who don’t have a clue what Möbius is about, there is a pretty nice definition on the Möbius website:   

“Möbius is an invitation-only community of the world’s most influential technology pundits and online writers. The collective insights, opinions and influence of Möbius drives market trends, industry buzz and the buying behavior of people worldwide. Möbians interact behind the scenes with companies big and small to shape the direction of devices, services, pricing, design and the culture of consumer technology.”  

You can furthermore read that Mobius is about a never ending conversation, which is to some extent a reflection of the word Möbius (strip) and its mathematical properties. However open dicussions and ongoing conversations about mobile technology and closely related topics are the essence of the Möbius group.

Möbius Conference 2009

Arne Hess, Windows Mobile MVP and Editor in Chief of the::unwired describes a Möbius conference in an article on his website as:

“Möbius isn’t just another blogger, press or analysts briefing but the main part of the whole conference it is the vital interaction and discussion between the attendees, Microsoft and its partners. It’s 48 hours of discussions, sharing information and thoughts about the mobile and wireless future.”  

In order to give you an idea about who is taking part in these discussions I would like to start with providing an overview of the attendees of the 2009 Möbius conference in Seattle:

• Alex Gay, Akihabara News
• Arne Hess, the::unwired
• Chris Ziegler, Engadget Mobile
• Dieter Bohn, Smartphone Experts
• Gianni Carfagno, SoloPalmari.com
• Jenneth Orantia, freelance writer
• Jerome Tranie, MobiFrance
• Derrick Ngan, Pocket PC Channel
• Joel Evans, Geek.com
• Judie Lipsett, Gear Diary
• Leigh Geary, Cool Smartphone
• Lisa Gade, MobileTechReview
• Matt Miller, ZDNet Smartphones & Cell Phones
• Michael Gartenberg, Gartenblog
• Paul O’Brien, MoDaCo.com
• Philip Berne, InfoSync World
• Rafe Blandford, All About Symbian
• Remo Knops, MobilityMinded
• Rich Brome, PhoneScoop
• Ryan Block, GDGT
• Sacha Fuentes, Xataka.com
• Sascha Segan, Gear Log
• Shane Chiang, Mobinauts
• Vincent Nguyen, Slash Gear

As you can see this is a great group of people, and I’m very fortunate to have met the probably smartest people in the mobile sector. Not only in terms of geographical location, but also in terms of formal education, type of website and even mobile platform it is a very diverse group. You can imagine that this adds some great value to the discussions. For example it is great to hear Rafe Blandford share his thoughts about the Symbian platform and the latest Symbian devices.

As you can read in the reports of the Mobius conference 2007 in Amsterdam (report day 1, report day 2, report day 3) there is always a great mix of sessions, about which we can write and sessions that are under the Mobius NDA handshake. Unfortunately this year the almost complete conference were NDA sessions, so I won’t be able to share reports like back in 2007.

However Jason Dunn, Windows Mobile- & Zune MVP and Editor in Chief of ThoughtsMedia, has written an excellent article (page 1, page 2) on the Windows Phone Thoughts website, which I would highly recommend you to read. Also Jenneth Orantia, freelance writer, has managed to write a trip report on the Gadget Monkeys blog. I think both these article should give you an idea about the Mobius 2009 conference.

Conclusive thoughts

I would like to start the concluding section with the fact that I really love Seattle as a city. Despite it was pretty cold and rainy (even for a Dutch guy), it is such a great city where you can really feel the creative city approach, which in concept has been described by visionary Charles Landry. It was for example great fun to visit the first Starbucks ever, and Pike Place Market together with Shane Chiang and Sacha Fuentes. I will definitely visite Seattle again in the future, it really felt like home there !

Furthermore the Mobius Conference 2009 was -in my perception- very successful. It is such a privelege to meet such smart and creative people from all over the world and engage in discussions with them about the future of (windows) mobile. Honestly the Mobius Conference has really given me a creative boost, and kept me going back home !!

I would really like to explicitly thank Microsoft for the inviting me to the event, I have been in a very fortunate position ! An addtional great many thanks to Microsoft for hooking all of us up with a Zune HD 32GB, which is an amazing device and much more than a mediaplayer. The Zune HD isn’t for sale in the Netherlands, so that makes it really special. Furthermore a great many thanks to HTC for giving us an HTC HD2, the most powerful Windows Phone on the market. Amazing, and blazing fast !

To wrap up I really had an amazing time in Seattle, it was great to catch-up with old friends, meet new friends and I finally would like to thank everyone again who contributed to the great conference !!