VentureBeat Mobile Summit: The top 180 players in mobile debate

I’m delighted to announce our inaugural VentureBeat Mobile Summit.

We’re inviting the top 180 movers and shakers in mobile to what we think will be one of the most important gatherings in the industry. The event will be at the beautiful Cavallo Point Resort (just across the Golden Gate Bridge from SF) on April 25-26.

The goal is to debate core challenges that grip the industry. I’m hopeful the best minds will be able to find answers to those challenges, and thereby spur the industry to much faster growth. Currently, we’re told, there is no place where the leaders of mobile can gather to get away from the noise — and for those who made it to Mobile World Congress last week, you know some of these conferences are mayhem. And so we ran with that idea. We’re planning to carry the conclusions we reach at the Summit over to our popular MobileBeat conference in July for wider discussion.

We are in the midst of compiling input for the Summit from the industry’s top players such as Google, Cisco, Verizon, AT&T, Qualcomm, PayPal, Nokia, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, Sequoia Capital, Kleiner Perkins, Accel Partners, and many more. And of course we’re inviting the top 40 or so most innovative and relevant private companies. We’ll tackle key issues from mobile payments to social identity. Core to the event will be five working groups. We plan to publish the draft recommendations generated by these working groups after the event, and then hone them further into a VentureBeat Manifesto which will be presented at the MobileBeat 2011 conference in July.

In addition to the boardroom sessions and presentations from thought leaders, we’ll have things like wine tastings to keep the brainstorming flowing.

This is a new type of event for us. It’s distinct from MobileBeat, our main mobile event, which we kicked off three years ago and which has grown steadily to more than 600 people. We expect even more people to come to MobileBeat 2011.

We’ve already reached out to a big part of our list of 180 players for the Summit. But we want to make sure we reached the entire community so as not to forget anyone. If you think you or you company deserves to be at the table, and you haven’t heard from us, please request an invitation here as soon as possible. We’ve launched a site with the basics — and will be revealing more details there over the next week or two. Contact the Mobile Summit team with any questions.

Looking forward to a terrific event in April!