So, it's been a week since I got back from Mobile 2.0 - and therefore highly remiss that I've not written about it yet.

I really enjoyed both the Developer Day and the main event. The former seemed to be focused around mobile web - with widgets in particular getting a lot of prominence. Whilst I'm not convinced that widgets are the future of all mobile apps, it's an area where - until recently - I've let myself lag behind a little, so I got a lot out of the sessions. And one quote from the very beginning has stuck with me - Dan Appelquist remarking that applications are nowadays being consumed more like songs than software.

The main event was pretty decent. On both days some panel discussions had a tendency to get a bit angels-on-pinheads - the one where 4 people debated publicly about who was most "open", each using a slightly different definition of the much overused word, didn't really hold my attention. But the off-track talks really shone for me - Tom Raftery berating the industry for its at best token gestures towards environmentalism, and Regine Beatty and Atau Tanaka one-upping each other with wonderful examples of mobile frivolity. And outside of these, Ted Morgan of Skyhook talking about their business (200m location searches a day, vs 300m or so Google searches per day!) and Priya Prakash's talk on Beyond Free (an evolution of the last few sessions I've seen her do) were particularly memorable.

The venues (Barcelona Activa and ESADE) were both excellent (modulo the temperature of rooms in the former, which got quite stuffy). Now I've experienced the double-whammy of rock-solid wi-fi and power at every seat, I suspect I'm going to be a little spoilt.

More than this though, on a personal level I got a lot out of the event. It seemed to have a perfect mix of 50% familiar faces and 50% new (and friendly) ones - I'm not a natural networker, but felt very comfortable at the event. And in particular it was great to finally meet Dom and Francois of the W3C and Mike Rowehl - all of whom I've known for a while, but only in a virtual sense. It's nice to have that corrected :)

I did a couple of sessions; one on Mobile User Experience for Developer Day, which was well attended but missed the mark a little, I felt. I emphasised how we run UX alongside development at FP over and above the specifics of mobile UX, and whilst my audience seemed happy to engage on this, I think I could've either been clearer in the title for the session, or put more emphasis on tactics than on process.

The "play" panel I sat on at the very end of the event was a different matter: really good fun, and an utter privilege to talk about location-based gaming, ghost hunting, shitting and sex, generative music and digital rights issues with Professor Tanaka, Gustav Soderstrom of Spotify, Akhil Monappa of Atlas Venture, and Michael Breidenbruecker - the lovable nutter behind Last.fm and RJDJ - all ably held together by Robin Wauters of TechCrunch.

And again, on a personal note I had a very interesting chat with Ted Morgan at the post-event dinner, learning exactly what it's like to get into work one day and find a message from Steve Jobs on your voicemail :)

Thanks to Rudy, Dan, and all the organisers and behind-the-scenes folks who made it happen. I'm already looking forward to next year, though I think I might give myself an extra day in Barcelona to help recover from Sonar...