@CTIA Day 1 – Exploring mobile web strategies

CTIA Wireless I.T. & Entertainment is dubbed the largest technology event in the mobile industry covering all aspects of wireless data. It’s actually a smaller event than their annual wireless conference in Las Vegas every spring, but the focus at this show is actually more relevant to the mobile marketer. 

The show officially starts today; however, I arrived Monday night in order to participate in a pre-show event called exploring mobile web strategies. The event was organized and moderated by Ajit Jaoker from futuretext.com who did a fantastic job of pulling in some heavy hitters in the mobile space for presentations and panels. 

I took 9 pages of notes – much of which I’ll share on this blog over the coming week as seperate entries…although if you’ve been following me on Twitter you’ve already gotten a preview of what is to come.  Topics that really caught my attention were: 

• Understanding and enticing the mobile user by Carol Taylor (Director of User Experience at Motricity)
• Mobile personas and segmentation by Pankaj Asundi (VP Media and content at Ericsson)
• Panel discussion around mobile social networks with senior representation from myGamma, mocospace, itsmy, mig33 and intercasting corp. This was probably the highlight of the day for me and will warrant it’s own entry with perspective
• Monetizing digital communities by Jouko Ahvenainen (Chief Strategy Officer of Xtract)
• Panel discussion around driving mobile web adoption with representation from Openware, Vantrix, Skyfire, Greystripe and Admob
• Panel discussion around mobile advertising – today and tomorrow with representation from Ericsson, Yahoo!, Admob and Nokia
• Designing for mobile by Barbara Ballard (CEO Little Springs Design)
• Mobile search – present and future by Bena Roberts (President, Visibility mobile) and Michael “Luni” Libes (Chief Architect of Medio Systems) – who I ended meeting later that night at the Moco mixer party

Overall it was a great start to the week. I’ve got a full day of meetings and sessions planned today and will likely be taking more notes for future posts. I’ve also brought along my video camera – so you can expect to see some video blog entries similar to what I posted at GSM and CTIA in Mach. 

I’m also still adjusting to left coast time. Speaking of which, it’s time for another coffee