Augmented Reality MoMo and Android m2d2 in DUS

Last MobileMonday evening came with a whole bunch of „firsts“: it was
the DUS chapter’s first event ever to be held in German language (marking a
certain predominance in the subject) and the first MoMo after Google’s Eric
Schmidt had announced the search behemoth’s new mantra to be “Mobile First!”.
What he meant was: Google will from now ion develop first for their mobile
platform Android with all what was once known as the web’s mainstream following
track.

Now: What’s the main difference between the web as a whole and the
mobile web – different screen-sizes, terms and prices for once taken aside?
It’s Your location and what is in it’s vicinity. Location and vicinity does not
really matter as long as you are in your office or your living room. But as
soon as you start moving and roaming around, the whole situation changes.

If you search for any kind of service on the go, you most probably want
something in your vicinity. If you look for directions, you are probably
looking at where to move from here to there. If you approach any of your
contacts in your social networks online, the ones near you are all of a sudden
the ones that matter the most. You get the picture: Location is not the
“killer-app” for certain, but the “killer
parameter” of mobile web usage.

And the future of interfacing this location is not going to be any kind
of maps for long, but the real location on your screen – enhanced, or
“augmented” with additional information of all kinds – hence our subject (and
all the hype in Barcelona): “Augmented Reality”.

First to enter center stage was Marc-Rene Gardaya, quality-.assurance
manager at AR-Browser maker “Layar”. After introducing the crowd to some AR
basics, he focused on Layar’s recent opening to third party developers, who can
now run their own layers on top of Layar’s “eco-system”. And Marc could already
announce that there are 1,500 developers providing digital contents for the 1
Million plus Layar user base.

Joachim Bader, CEO of interactive agency Clanmo, a subsidiary of
Mindmatics AG, showed their “near AR” app for client Ikea. The idea of letting
users (and potential customers) fit some Ikea furniture into the pictures taken
in gtheir own private spaces went as well with the client as with media and the
mobile audience. So stay tuned for the Ikea app “2.0”.

Markus Tripp of Mobilizy from Salzburg introduced the new features and
AdOns of the “other” AR browser in the marketplace “Wikitude”. And guess what –
being already well stuffed with contents from Google, YouTube and Wikipedia,
Wikitude4 is now also wide open for user generated (!) contents.

The panel of distinguished speakers was closed by Dan Romescu who
presented his concept of the “Augmented Citizen”. He suggested that mobile AR
is much more than only “another mobile channel”. It marks a different (virtual)
world, adding all kinds of personal as well as communal and commercial
information to public platforms. Thus making whole new concepts of “privacy”
and data-protection not only viable but necessary in the future.

Another “first” followed right the next morning: MoMo DUS opened doors
to the first MobileMonday DeveloperDay (m2d2) worldwide! This new format that
will develop into a series of events travelling throughout Germany provides a
full day of exchange for mobile developers together with presentations and
hands-on coding camps.

And it was not by chance that Android was chosen as the subject of the
first m2d2: First the platform has a dedicated developer community like no
other mobile platform – maybe not in numbers, but certainly in skills,
dedication and experience. Second, as you could learn in Barcelona, ther’s an
amazing 60,000 Android-handsets sold every day – giving the platform huge
momentum. All that meaning: it’s a good idea for whoever wants to develop for
the mobile web, to take a good look at Android first. And that was obviously
the reason why not only well seasoned Android developers but also a good number
of “newbies” filled up the conference rooms in general and the “Hello World” workshop
for Android beginners in particular.

MoMo’s call for participation resulted in a stunning 16 proposals making
a 2-track schedule necessary. There were camps and presentations of all
skill-levels and the 100+ developers gathered again at Grey’s Dusseldorfer
“Ideen Botschaft” seemed to enjoy them all.

And many a developer made the event not only a spectacular success for
the organizing team, but made the vent really their own “baby”. The general
mood and atmosphere, the exchange of ideas and resources, hacks and
business-models was great fun and gain to be with. We all enjoyed creative and
inspiring, open and concentrated sessions. Speakers from SAP and Deutsche
Telekom’s “Developer Garden”, from AndroidPit and numerous startup companies
made for a mix that was just right. All felt immediately at home with m2d2 and
enjoyed being part of it.

To no big a surprise schedules and timings were “over-writ ten” and many a developer could be seen
to stay for another drink or two after the sessions had come to a close – thus adding
a Mobile Tuesday night to our regular MobileMonday networking routine.