I found out about MobileCampNYC only three days ago - instead of painting today, I ended up spending all afternoon and early evening with a great bunch of people at Pace University in Lower Manhattan.

I walked in just in time for lunch and happened to bump into Dave Winer of Scripting News; I said hello - that's about it; Dave already posted about MobileCamp earlier today.

The first session I sat in on was Txtual Healing -

"…Expression, participation, mobile phones, Nazi's and public space. Who's owning your physical spaces? We'll write a song on the spot from your txt messaging. Also I'll show how to build a mobile SMS gateway for projecting text messages from your mac - Paul Notzold - txtual healing "

One thing that struck me while listening to Paul Notzold's presentation is Art as created by onlookers - by the audience - who create much of the meaning and context via SMS messages.  In a way, Art is performance that happens and may, or may not be, recorded.   Since most of the scenes where Paul Notzold projected his work were in Brooklyn, in areas I'm familiar with, I found his presentation especially interesting (see the YouTube video, below).

I asked Paul why he always used white light and not colored light - he says that he's never sure what color the surfaces he projects onto are going to be and the only color that consistently shows up on any surface is white.

Also listened to a presentation about creating a NYC top level domain:

"….Towards a Mobile-Friendly City - The .NYC top level domain promises a new set of domain names, a directory, and other features imagined for the wired Internet. Help configure it for our mobile needs. Start with a 10 minute overview by Tom Lowenhaupt then brainstorm on mobility and a geographic TLD. Preview. "

I can see pluses and minutes in having domains for cities - I'm told Paris is working on one while Berlin already has one: also, HongKong has top level domain but most cities, overall, don't.   Interesting - this discussion was taking place in a MobileCamp (Mobile Technology) that incorporates or uses Geo-Location (which kinda lessens the argument for need domains built around cities). 

However, I think a ".NYC" domain would help the quality of local search for New York City - and the domain name would only be given (I suppose) to businesses and individuals that actually live in New York City - but even that would be difficult to enforce and maintain (IE: what happens to people who get the .NYC domain while living here and then move - do they suddenly give it up?  And if they don't, is the .NYC domain fulfilling it's role?

Listened to a presentation Where.com that sounded interesting also:

"..Mashup your phone with GPS. If you have a server you can launch a mobile, location-aware app. - WHERE.com "

Did not understand all the ins and outs of this session - and I'm not clear the TMobile Sidekick 3, my current mobile device, supports any of it.

Finally, I spent the last session listening to a presentation about the Metaverse and the Mobile Space - Intersection or Inclusion:

"…Metaverse and The Mobile Space: Intersection or Inclusion - Tish Shute Ugotrade and Otto Leichliter - robotics, mobile space and metadesign. (Add you name here if you would like to help lead this discussion)"

Tish Shute and her husband (who had their engaging youngster with them  playing outside the room and in Pace's corridors) are people with very interesting backgrounds and who talked about Second Life from a Social Media perspective.  I think Tish and her husband would be good people to know - and apparently, they have connections with some very well known IBM Scientists.   I talked, more in a general way, about the New IBM Virtual Business Center that launched earlier this week - this is the project I'm providing Web Metrics for.

While I wanted to attend Timo Arnall's presentation, who flew in from Norway, just for this conference, I ended up missing it but did talk to him at the pre-conference party last night, which I also attended, along with Liz Camps - who could not make it today.

All in all, I spoke with the following people (and collected Business Cards for each)

Paris Marashi - Paris just graduated NYU's ITP program, is originally from Iran and was interesting to talk with.

Thomas Lowenhaupt - Thomas is behind the .NYC domain registration movement and also was familiar with Second Life developments.

Richard LaBarca - also presented in the last session about algorithms for describing a person's relation to data that can be normalized and fed out to Second Life to build an object, like growing a tree, which others can then interact with.

Dean Collins - Dean talked to me about and SMS application his company created, www.mexuar.com, and said it was connected to a project based somewhat on a research project at IBM that IBM never ended up using.

As we all left the Pace Campus - it was raining and I ended up spending another hour hanging out with a small group fellow attendees including Paris Marashi, who I continued to have a spirited conversation with; upon my suggestion we made our way to the Mocca Lounge, about 6 blocks away and had a light dinner.

And then I headed back to Brooklyn.  An interesting conference and definitely worth going to.