MUSE3

Sunday's Open Mobile event was a resounding success, one I hope we can repeat soon. We saw presentations about the hows and whys of open technologies in efforts to bridge the digital divide. We were given insight into the future of a mobile-accessible web, and the centrality of context awareness in designing for the mobile. We caught a glimpse of how to plan and excute event documentation using mobile videography, with hints on how to build a business model out of this. We were shown an intriguing experiment in sound design using the moods of multiple users in a shared location. We were offered a rare view into Latin American approaches to mobile phone art.

Following on the heels of the wildly successful MobileCampVancouver 2008, Mobile Muse is proud to present - in conjunction with New Forms Festival - Open Mobile on Sunday September 21st. I will be kicking off the day with a talk about the future of mobiles, accompanied by visuals from Roland Tanglao and Jesse Scott. The rest of the day will be filled with a range of provocative and highly informative presentations from artists, mobile marketers, event programmers, social activists, and just plain old mobile geeks. See the eventbrite page for exact location, times, and speaker topics.

Whether you're a social services provider, an arts collective, a commercial event producer, a mobile application developer, or even a group or company with some brilliant idea about bringing advanced mobile web services to the masses, Mobile Muse is for you.

You're probably wondering "how"? Perhaps also "why"?

Starting next week, I will post here the first article in a series that introduces Mobile Muse - its mission and mandate, our current and past projects, future directions for mobile, and a friendly guidebook of sorts that orients readers to our development process. Watch for interviews with our developer community, highlights from our current crop of showcase projects, and the occasional guest post from experts in this area.

Along the way I'll point the way to the resources available within not only this site, but also among our network of researchers, developers and community groups.

Thanks to everyone who turned up for our Showcase Forum last Friday. It was great to see everyone from all of the project teams as well as everyone else who showed up to see what MUSE3 is all about.

As some of you already know, we had one of our participating companies, ComVu, publish a mobile phone-powered webcast of the event. Early feedback has indicated that the audio in that webcast was not as good as it could be (we'll definitely improve upon this for next time!).

In anticipation of public engagement potentials related to the 2010 Winter Olympics, the Mobile MUSE Network is launching its third major development program (MUSE3). 

MUSE3 will focus on community generated media (CGM)” to activate “live space” potentials – building technologies and toolkits to enable communities to use mobile, internet, and large public display media for collective expression and celebration.  Over the next two years MUSE3 will engage with a set of communities to develop and showcase these technologies.