First of all, I want to thank Russ for the nice words he said about me. (They really did leave me speechless last night.) And everyone else who liked, commented, and linked to my last post. It’s really encouraging to hear other’s feedback and thoughts, as well as to know if you like or dislike things I am thinking. With that said, I will try to post more, because I am learning a lot from this too.

Last night I went to Mobile Monday. It was the first night that there were presenters and topics. I liked the format and think that it went well for everyone to get on one page to begin discussions.

The presentation about Enterprise applications got me thinking a bit. I’ve never really thought about these before, but I’ve only thought about consumer applications. However, these will be important as well and how we will make them make sense will be crucial. We can’t just port the sites to the phone… So, how will we make meaning full interactions for say Accounts receivable? And well, does that even make sense? I then read Threadwatch’s post complaining about what will happen to web devs?

It’s one of the biggest misconceptions that you can just take the functionality of the web apps to the phone. And last night, there was talk of just taking the enterprise solutions and making them run through the phone browser. However, this wont work, nor does it make sense. So what’s the solution? Maybe it’s a different presentation layer… something like what Mfoundry has done. Something that combines Java and web technologies. So that the content creators can still use their backend web structures, but the presentation layer will be more applicable to the phone. But, more likely it’s also probably that somethings may not make sense to be on the mobile.

If I were a web dev, I wouldn’t worry too much about being out of work. In the next few years there is going to be so much going on to make all the different platforms talk, sync, and share data… (and who knows how that will happen)… that your skills will probably be in higher demand than ever. This revolution is not going to do away with web technologies. It’s just going to change how they work. It’s going to change what they are used for, and who is using them… meaning more work for you to do.

Revolution and change doesn’t mean destruction of something old. It usually just means reshifting it, refurbishing, rebuilding… and making it more appropriate.

Anita