CTIA’s eponymous spring conference used to be the biggest mobile and wireless event in North America, providing the latest showcase for new phones, services and technology. But in the last five years or so the event has been overshadowed by the CEA’s Consumer Electronics Showcase in Las Vegas and the GSM Association’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

Not only do both shows take place right before CTIA each calendar year, but shifting trends in the industry made CTIA less and less relevant. CTIA is a carrier-driven event, but as the smartphone opened up the mobile ecosystem to a wealth of new third-party apps, OSes and devices; the role of the carrier has shrunk. Meanwhile, the importance of the smartphone as a high-powered connected computer has gained primacy, which made CES a natural fit for new device and app launches.

CTIA’s other big focus was on the arcane world of network infrastructure, in particular the CDMA technologies used by a good deal of operators in the Americas. But as global carriers consolidated under a single GSM-driven 4G technology, LTE, CTIA’s networking influenced dwindled. MWC, which originally focused on European operators and GSM standards, became a much more worldly conference.

While CTIA didn’t specifically cite the competition in its announcement, the big reason for placing its unified super show in the fall can only be to put some distance between it and CES and MWC. The first merged event will be held the week of Sept. 9 in Las Vegas, which positions CTIA to catch new device launches for the holidays.

CTIA’s exhibitors and members have been clamoring for a single-show format for years, but I wonder if the move is a bit too late to restore the conference’s luster. As I’ve said before, the biggest problem with CTIA is that, as a conference, it has functioned more as a big podium from which carriers talked down to the industry. That was fine 10 years ago when carriers were the alpha and the omega of mobile, but since then the industry has outgrown the operators.

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Seesmic CEO Loic Le Meur

Started more than seven years ago, the event now claims to be the industry’s most international shindig, and now it’s about to see its first spin-off, to be held in London next month.

But when I spoke to Le Meur a couple of days ago, he admitted to me that just a few months back it wasn’t the English Channel he wanted to cross with LeWeb — it was the Atlantic. He’d just started exploring the idea of starting a LeWeb for the Bay Area, where he has lived for the past five years.

“We had started to think about doing one in San Francisco,” Le Meur told me. “But then Cameron stepped in.”

By “Cameron” he means David Cameron, the British Prime Minister.

Reports have long suggested that the British government — keen to score a victory over their rivals in France — wanted to lure LeWeb to London. Le Meur says those rumors are accurate, but he never intended to move the entire conference away from Paris. However, he says, in the end, British politicos offered such a range of assistance that eventually meant the decision to set up a second, London-based event, was easy to make.

“It was a special request from Mr Cameron,” says Le Meur. “Last year I was was a Founders’ Forum event and I was very impressed because he shook me by the hand and said ‘Loic, you need to move Le Web to London.’ We’re not moving Le Web, and we had no plans for London just two months ago. But they’ve been so helpful that we couldn’t refuse.”

That helpfulness extended to a financial commitment, too, with Tech City Investment Organization (the body charged with drumming up publicity and investment for London’s startup scene ahead of the 2012 Olympic Games) acting as the first major sponsor for the event.

But anyone concerned that the U.K. government may end up underwriting the whole affair as it tries to woo European startups to London are misplaced, says Le Meur.

“They took a top-level sponsorship, but I would say it’s about 10 to 20 percent of the whole budget,” he says. “It’s very nice and one reason we decided to go to London, but we’re still taking a risk.”

That chimes with what TCIO chief Eric van der Kleij told me last month.

Le Meur said that the early takeup for the event, which takes place on June 19th and 20th, shows there actually is “room and demand in London for us”, and that there is enough going on in the startup world to warrant a spinoff.

“Everything moves so fast in six months,” he says. “At LeWeb, nobody was talking about Pinterest. Instagram was on stage in Paris, but nobody cared very much.”

Photo of Loic Le Meur courtesy of Joi Ito on Flickr. Photo of David Cameron user under Creative Commons license courtesy of World Economic Forum.

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The new show has been recast as a celebration of the best the Apple community has to offer, drawing from music and the arts for inspiration as well as sharing tips and tricks. The iFanEvent, as it’s being called, goes beyond the usual media personalities presenting tech topics in lectures or panel discussions. The Midway will highlight music performances, interactive sessions, and galleries for visual arts and film. I got a small preview Wednesday, and a visit to the South Park Gallery and the Digital Art Gallery  is worth the time it takes to ride the escalator up to the second floor. There will also be a full schedule of music performances and live art creation, as well as a film festival screening on Friday evening.

In addition to the iFanEvent itself, the concurrent MacIT Conference continues the tradition of more advanced technical training for professionals and educators. All-day workshops took place Wednesday, and various sessions are scheduled for Thursday, Friday and Saturday. I didn’t get a chance to visit all the workshops, but I did notice the Educator track presented by Computer-Using Educators, Inc. (CUE) was well attended compared to previous years, especially considering the Wednesday timing which would require teachers to arrange a sub in order to attend.

There was no Industry Showcase this year, but the Media Preview event yesterday highlighted a few interesting vendors, and the First Looks program brought together all the new product announcements in one place. Consigned to a few small folding tables in the lobby of Moscone West, I felt the First Looks program didn’t necessarily present the most attractive venue, but we hope to bring you details on some of the more interesting items in our ongoing coverage.

David Greenbaum and I will be roaming the show floor Thursday and Friday looking for all things new and interesting, in addition to meeting with various companies to get detailed looks at products to share with you over the next little while. If you’re at the show, be sure to stop and say hello if you see us on the floor and let us know what you liked. If you can’t make the show this year, let us know if there’s anything specific you’d like to hear about.

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This all day event with Facebook engineers and product teams will feature keynotes and session tracks that highlight our new tools along with best practices for developers and partners building the next generation of social experiences.

Despite its tagline as a developer conference, f8 2011 is not likely to be your run-of-the-mill hacker meetup. As Om Malik reported here earlier this summer, Facebook has been very busy meeting with entertainment and media industry players, and is set to reveal some splashy new partnerships at this year’s f8.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been talking for months about how his company is keen to lend its social networking prowess to content providers. At the press event for Facebook’s video chat partnership with Skype held last month, Zuckerberg said: “The stuff that’s going to get built in the next three to five years is going to be built on top of the infrastructure we’ve built. We have a lot of stuff along this theme over the next few months that we’re going to roll out.”

One of the main contenders to announce a deeper Facebook integration at f8 is Spotify, the European music streaming service that made big waves when it launched in the US last month. Facebook has been strengthening its ties with Hollywood as well: Netflix CEO Reed Hastings is the newest member of Facebook’s board of directors, and movie studio Miramax announced its first digital Facebook app earlier this week.

With Facebook firing on all cylinders since the launch of rival social network Google+ earlier this summer, it’s looking very likely that there will be a fair amount of stardust at this year’s f8 event.

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Next Jump and NYSE are hosting the SA 500, or Silicon Alley 500, a bid to bring 500 top engineering students from Washington, D.C., to Boston to meet 50 of the best East Coast technology companies. The event, scheduled for Oct. 15, will attract students from MIT, Cornell, Harvard, Princeton, Columbia, Carnegie Mellon, Brown and Georgia Tech. Applications are being accepted for both companies and students here.

Now, there’s no guarantee that SA 500 will meet its goals for students and companies. But it’s a major effort to strengthen the New York and East Coast tech ecosystem and help companies to grow and thrive without losing talent to Silicon Valley. It also shows that New York is rising to the challenge of being a major tech destination.

“There are great tech opportunities on the East Coast, but the infrastructure for bringing tomorrow’s talents together with today’s entrepreneurs needs strengthening,” said Charlie Kim, the CEO of Next Jump. “By taking it to the next level with events like SA 500, we are bolstering the engineering community as a whole.”

Kim said the event is unique for its venue, a place few ever get to see, as well as its focus on engineers only, together with tech companies. He said Next Jump has taken the lead on this because it has made significant inroads in on-campus recruiting, and earlier this year it piloted a recruiting event in conjunction with the New York Economic Development Corporation in Boston that attracted 18 tech firms and nearly 200 students.

The SA 500 is just one of many endeavors intent on elevating New York as a tech hub. Mayor Michael Bloomberg recently announced plans for Applied Sciences NYC, a bid to build or expand a state-of-the-art engineering and applied sciences campus in New York City, a project for which Kim is a key advisor. Kayweb Angels, a new angel investment group, launched in April to solve New York’s engineering talent crisis by offering development resources to startups in exchange for equity. Hackcruiter, a New York–based startup, is helping startups find good engineers in New York and San Francisco.

As Chris Dixon, Hunch CEO and the co-founder of Founder Collective, pointed out in a blog this week, the problem isn’t so much about supply. It’s that New York has a problem marketing itself as a destination for engineering talent.

The problem is that NYC startups are basically unknown to students at MIT, CMU, Penn, and even (shockingly) to engineering students at NYU and Columbia (big props to HackNY for trying to fix this). East Coast CS students also view startups as a much riskier path than they actually are. I say this having been at dozens of events with East Coast students over the last year or so talking about startups. I’m constantly amazed that most of the students simply don’t realize startups are a viable option.

One event won’t change things for New York, but it may help in the overall marketing message for the city as it tries to convince engineers that it has plenty to offer.

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Planning

For a while, I gave up pre-planning almost entirely and relied on serendipity or conversations with other attendees to guide my way to sessions. While this works to some extent, I found myself missing too many interesting sessions. So now, I’ve started pre-planning sessions that I want to attend, and for large conferences, like SXSW, I identify two or three at every time slot, which allows me to pick the one I’m in the mood to see, and also gives me a backup in case my first choice was a dud or too crowded.

I also try to pick a variety of types of sessions so that I can get a broad range of knowledge with some more technical talks and others leaning toward community or business topics. I also try to pick speakers who have done amazing things to get more insight into the stories behind their success.

Finally, I’m always prepared to deviate from my plan to see sessions based on recommendations from other attendees or to take advantage of other interesting opportunities at the event. If I’m in a session that turns out to be a snooze, I’ll do a quick check on Twitter to see if friends are raving about another session that I might want to catch instead.

Conversations

Don’t underestimate the value of the “hallway track” where you can have interesting conversations with amazing people outside of the traditional conference format. This is an especially important side-effect of conferences for those of us who regularly work remotely or who work in a job with few peers within our own company. I’m not saying that you should spend all your time chatting with friends, but it is important to balance sessions with time spent talking to other people in your field. This is an opportunity to build lasting personal and professional relationships with smart people working in similar roles.

Make sure you attend the parties or meet up with other people for meals. While this might feels like goofing off, it’s really one of the easiest ways to get to know other people in your field. Resist the urge to go back to your hotel early and be careful not to hang out with the same few people during the entire conference. Take advantage of all of these opportunities to talk to new and interesting people, and make an active effort to renew relationships with people you’ve met before while making sure that you also spend time meeting new people.

Ditch Work

I know, you are incredibly important, and you can’t possibly ignore your work for more than a few minutes at a time. However, if you spend all of your time at the conference on email and calling into meetings, you might as well have saved some money and stayed at home to work. If you really want to get the most value out of the conference, you’ll put off what you can and delegate the rest to someone else for a few days.

Follow Up

Most of us leave a conference with a big pile of notes that we never look at again. You really need to do something with all of that information. I usually try to get a few blog posts out of each conference, or at least one post with something interesting that I learned. If you work with a team of people, a short trip report to share what you learned with your team might also be a good idea.

I also try to come up with at least five things that require some additional work on my part, and I add them to my task list. These might include an idea for a new project I want to start, something I want to implement in my current job, an interesting technology that I want to learn or someone that I want to follow up with on a specific topic. By getting these out of the huge pile of notes and onto my task list, I’ve drastically increased the chances that I will actually do something rather than forget all about it when I return home.

What are your favorite tips for getting the most value from attending a conference?

Photo courtesy Flickr user Kenneth Yeung

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Here are some of the latest and greatest apps I’ve found to help me connect with others, find places to go and document and share my experience.

1. SXSW Go. This is the official SXSW app, which helps to track the multitude of sessions and events you can attend.
2. Plancast. Announce your plans, such as the conferences or events you are planning to attend. Then search for plans, people or categories of events through this app and see where your friends are going. Check out the Unofficial SXSW Events Guide.
3. GroupMe. Create a private text chat room by grouping people in your contact list. Handy for making plans amongst friends and acquaintances to meet up at a conference. Other similar text grouping apps include Beluga and TextPlus.
4. Yobongo. This app runs on the premise that you may want to chat with others based on proximity and may need help breaking the ice to get a conversation started in real time.
5. Hashable. Track the people you are meeting with and introducing to one another using this app to help build your network and augment your address book with key information about your relationships with others.
6. Hurricane Party. With this app, you can specify your location and the time and tap into your contacts to bring people together. Personally, I may use this app to let folks know where I’m having lunch within walking distance of the convention center to invite them over to join me.
7. Liquidspace. This app identifies possible work locations nearby and can issue you with a “visa” for your Liquidspace “passport” to book and access those work spaces. Spaces can free or fee-based and can include empty work cubicles or board rooms at nearby offices; meeting rooms at hotels; backrooms at restaurants, or any underutilized work-ready space. The company behind the app provides the owners of these spaces with tools to manage space inventory including bookings. If you’re at SXSW, look for the workspace in a bus renovated by Steelcase/Turnstone.
8. Paperlinks. I’m embracing the QR Code trend with new business cards courtesy of Paperlinks. I’m also investing $250/year for the custom mobile destination site where my cards lead. See my earlier post on Paperlinks for more details.
9. Retrollect. Remember View-Masters? This app lets you upload, save and view photos in a similar way. I’ll also use my favorite storytelling photo app Whrrl, Instagram, and I’ll check in now and then on Foursquare.
10. Geoloqi. If all this location sharing has you freaked out, this app allows for private, real-time sharing of location data. You can leave “Geonotes” at locations where you’ve been, be notified if your friends are close by or share GPS maps of your locations only with people you know.

For more on useful mobile apps for conferences, check out my post from last year and my toolkit at OneForty.

What apps are on your smartphone for SXSW and upcoming conferences?

Photo courtesy stock.xchng user bvdwiel.

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Maybe you can’t hire a famous cartoonist or Lady Gaga, but you could work with your employer or clients to incorporate something fun into an event. Cartoonists, artists, musicians and other talented people can help make an event fun. If you don’t have money to hire people to perform, you could hold a contest where people can perform and win prizes. This could be anything from a battle of the bands with real instruments to Rock Band competitions, talent contests, arm wrestling, juggling or any other fun and crazy scheme you can come up with to add a little excitement. Toys can also help make an event more fun: a few hula hoops, video games, puzzles, puppets or other toys or cool tech gadgets can help introduce some fun.

Most of us have some conferences that we are obligated to attend or that we feel that we should attend because they will have some benefit in the future, but many of them just aren’t fun. Spend some time thinking about which conferences you enjoy attending and try to find excuses to attend more conferences like those. We all have different interests and get enjoyment from different types of conferences. When I was consulting full-time and doing online community strategy, I attended a few community and social media conferences, but most were too marketing-oriented for me, and I didn’t really enjoy them. I prefer to attend conferences filled with geeky developer types and smart people building really interesting things out of cutting edge technologies, so I like to attend open source / Linux developer conferences, SXSW and various unconferences. Budget is always an issue with going to conferences, but you can often attend them for free by speaking or volunteering to work at a conference if money is tight.

You can even make your own event. We often forget to celebrate our work achievements, but having something to celebrate, even a small accomplishment, can make a great excuse for a little party. For the big things, it can be really fun to have a huge party with a nice budget. However, we can also throw little mini parties to celebrate the smaller accomplishments without breaking the bank. On the low end, you can do a team lunch, happy hour at a local pub or a celebration in the office with a few snacks. If you have a little budget, find something fun for the team to do together and throw a bigger party. Either way, you can make work into a fun event.

What is your favorite way to make work events fun?

Photo by Flickr user Dana Tuszke used under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

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But how can you focus on note taking when you have other things on your mind such as networking, the other sessions you have to attend, and possibly some additional work you have to do? Here are three things you should keep in mind:

• Remember that being present and attentive is your priority. This means actively listening, looking at visual aids, and paying attention to the lecture itself. While you can record audio, video, or view live tweets, these must be for reference only and not a substitute for the real thing. It makes no sense to sit in an auditorium for an hour only to repeat that hour via a recording because you were too busy taking notes or getting to know the person beside you to digest the finer details.
• Know why you’re taking down notes. Is it for faster recall or to record your own insight? Will you be using your notes to write a blog post or make a presentation at work? The reasons behind your note-taking will help you determine the best approach and tools to use.
• Get as much information as you can about the tech specs of the event beforehand. Will there be free internet access available? How reliable is it and will be be available throughout the entire venue? Will you be able to plug or charge your devices easily? This information can help you choose your tools accordingly.

With that out of the way, it’s only a matter of getting your notes down as efficiently as possible.

Using Tools to Improve Note-taking

According to a research paper on note taking, in an academic setting the average note-taking speed for students is 0.3 to 0.4 words per second, while lecturers speak at around 2 to 3 words per second. With this speed discrepancy it’s no wonder that most people find it hard to jot down concise yet complete notes. Still, there are ways to work around this:

• Don’t rely solely on text-based notes. While many of us are used to pen-and-paper note-taking methods, the difference in speech and writing speed means that we can’t rely on them alone. This is why we should look beyond written notes. We could include mindmaps, photos (of important slides, for example), or audio recording. Some apps that allow you to record in a variety of formats include Evernote, Springpad, FolderBoy (which Charles reviewed here), and Notepub.
• Use fast tools. Don’t just look for fast loading time or responsiveness, but note your own speed when using the tool. This means that some options aren’t ideal for many people, such as alphanumeric keypads and apps for handwriting or speech recognition. You can even use SMS abbreviations, shorthand, macros, and word completion apps to increase speed further.
• Process your notes. Directly after the lecture is the best time to enter the second phase of note-taking: information processing. This is where you’ll start to consult external sources for additional information and make connections among the things you’ve learned. You could do this by organizing all the material you’ve gathered and by making annotations. Some handy annotation tools include Apollo and A.nnotate.

Taking a cue from student life, don’t be afraid to borrow the notes of other attendees. You can borrow notes directly from people you have a strong rapport with, or wait for bloggers to post their own notes or articles summarizing the talk. They might include some points you’ve missed or make connections that you didn’t think of. Just be sure to offer to share your own notes and express that you’re looking for something supplementary. You don’t want to leave the impression that you’re asking them to do all your work for you.

It may take a lot of practice to become very effective at note-taking, but the important thing is to get better each time.

Share your note-taking tips below.

Photo by stock.xchng user christgr

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Organized by Hank Green, the younger Vlogbrothers brother and thus a longtime YouTuber, VidCon is meant as a celebration of the online video world. There’s a clear emphasis on YouTubers in the lineup: the impressive roster of speakers includes Shane Dawson, Shay Carl, Ze Frank, Philip DeFranco, The Gregory Brothers (Auto-Tune the News), Tay Zonday, iJustine, Swift Karate Chop, Charlie McDonnell, Brittani Louise Taylor, Dave Days, Natalie Tran, Lisa Nova, The Fine Brothers, Rhett and Link., MeMeMolly, Mystery Guitar Man, Kaleb Nation, Alex Day, Kassem G, Nalts, Dan Brown, Michael Buckley, David Choi, Julia Nunes, Karen (Spricket) Alloy, Mitchell Davis, Michael Aranda, Iman Crosson (Alphacat), Tim De La Ghetto, Tessa (Meekakitty) Violet and Marina (Hot for Words) Orlova.

But while there’s no official organization backing VidCon, industry players have embraced it, and also slated to speak are Jim Louderback from Revision3, Hunter Walk and George Strompolos of YouTube, Barely Political’s Ben Relles and representatives from JibJab and Machinima.com.

In a phone interview, Green compared VidCon to the Penny Arcade-organized PAX conference, which brings together both the video game industry as well as video game enthusiasts for a celebration of the industry. This means the focus of VidCon is on connecting attendees with each other and their favorite YouTube creators, although Green says there will be a few announcements made — including one by YouTube during Walk’s Friday morning keynote. Green couldn’t hint at what that announcement might be, except to say that the YouTube team was “very insistent on needing a large screen TV.”

Awareness of VidCon has spread in a gradual way, with potential speakers and sponsors getting involved organically. “I’ve had several sponsors come out of the woodwork because their kids told them to. In particular, Cisco is now on board sponsoring VidCon entirely because one of their marketing VPs had a daughter who was a fan of mine,” Green said.

Green is pushing VidCon as a conference for both online video professionals and fans of the medium because, according to Green, “A lot of [YouTubers] don’t really realize the kind of reach and impact they have, especially when it comes to 18 or 19 year olds who don’t recognize the scope of their audience, which is sometimes in the 500,000-600,000s,” he said.

While issues like DMCA takedowns and monetization strategies will be discussed, the point Green is hoping to emphasize over the course of the three days is that “it’s very important for people to have a personal relationship with their audience.”

Only two of the three days of VidCon have been programmed, with the last day of the conference being reserved for more informal interactions, such as open mic sessions and Calvinball.

Currently 1400 people are set to be in attendance, with 100 of that being major YouTube players or industry professionals. 200 to 250 of those attending have also signed up for “Insider” track sessions, which will focus on topics like merchandising, destination sites, and the music industry. And as of June 30, VidCon tickets and sponsorship slots are entirely sold out.

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