It goes without saying that mobile’s been a fascinating space to play in over the past few years. It’s also an understatement to say that my views have shifted as the ecosystem has developed.
I started the journey fiercely advocating to the industry and to developers that web technologies should be the lingua franca of mobile apps, both during my brief time at Mozilla and later while I was at Palm as part of the webOS team. Alas, the potential of the web was never realized by the mobile web on iOS and Android and simultaneously the native mobile SDKs exploded in sophistication and richness. Consequently, my views on the role of web in mobile have become… more nuanced.
Dion and I have gone into some detail on these views in various presentations; the next one will be hosted at our Walmart Labs facility close to San Francisco on Tuesday December 4th.
I’m also thrilled to join some of the most influential developers of our time for a panel version of this conversation to be held just two days later as part of PayPal’s TechXploration series down in San Jose. Dion and I will moderate a panel including:
- Abe Elias, founder, CTO and former CEO of Sencha (the ExtJS company)
- Andre Charland, former President of Nitobi (the PhoneGap company, sold to Adobe)
- Jeff Haynie, founder and CEO of Appcelerator (he still writes code btw)
- Steve Yankovich, eBay’s VP Mobile
- David Kaneda, Designer in Residence at Benchmark Capital
I can’t wait to hear what comes out of a conversation with such a great mix of experts on both sides of the issues. Abe, Andre, and Jeff know their tech very deeply, Steve is in the middle of all this with web and native in one of the world’s largest web properties, and David will add a fantastic design perspective. Dion and I have both intellectual and pragmatic interest in the topic ourselves with our roles running mobile engineering at the world’s largest retailer.
I hope I’ll be able to discuss the future of mobile with you in person at one of these two events; come join in and tell me what you think–and let’s help each other evolve our views just a little more.
Ben Galbraith 
Dear Mr. Galbraith
I am writing from Iran Mobile Congress (IMC 2013).
We would like to invite you to give a video conference keynote speech at our congress.
Iran Mobile Congress (IMC) will present four parallel conferences as following:
Mobile Content and Applications Conference
Mobile Payments and Financial Services Conference
Mobile Value Added Services Conference
Mobile Public and Government Services Conference
This is the third year that we are holding these conferences in Iran. This congress is being held every year and receives a great approval by public and private sectors organizations and people interested/who have expertise in mobile field.
We know about your expertise and hope that you will accept our invitation to give a video conference keynote speech at our conference which is being held on Feb 17th -18th. We understand that you have a heavy schedule; I hope our early invitation make our request fit in your calendar.
It would be helpful for us in formalizing our agenda for the conference if we could receive your response as early as possible. We sincerely hope you will be able to join us on our conference.
I am looking forward to hearing from you. Thank you in advance.
Yours Sincerely,
Zahra Baghery
I’ll be grateful if you continue this in future. Lots of people will be benefited from your writing.