Highlights from Mobile Monday

I *finally* made it out to Mobile Monday yesterday and I'm so glad I did. Besides winning the door prize for a cool new Blackberry Pearl (very exciting!) I met a lot of smart people who know a lot about mobile technologies.

The first presentation was Mike Heinrich from VoiceOnTheGo. As the name suggests the technology provides voice access to your email, calendar, and contacts. By holding a microphone to a cell phone Mike walked us through a demonstration of the main tasks and they were all relatively easy to accomplish. A little time consuming compared with typing out a quick email or calendar appointment. But as laws are put into place to ban handhelds while driving I expect more and more commuters will be looking for alternativees.

Next up was Ramesh Balakrishnan from Critical Path talking about his solution to bring email to cell phone users. Consumers can whitelist or blacklist any number of email addresses so they only receive email on their phone from the people they select. An interesting idea for the consumer market who isn't toting a PDA on their hip. Although as text messaging takes off I wonder if the consumer market will skip email all together?

The two presentations were followed up by a panel discussion with the presenters and Philippe Lozier from Rogers Wireless. Kudos to Philippe for handling so many questions and sharing some of the customer service initiatives Rogers is working on.

The session last night was about the technologies behind mobile solutions. I'm interested in hearing how marketers are using mobile. Is anyone working on an interesting marketing campaign that incorporates mobile into the mix? Care to share your learnings/experience in the comments below?