On Monday March 1, 2010 we conducted the first outdoor Mobile Monday Switzerland event on the Polyterrasse in Zurich.

We took a chance when we scheduled this two-hour Hands-On Mobile Augmented Reality event for the first day of March. It could have been raining, snowing or windy. The day before, on February 28, when we were doing our rehearsals on the Polyterrasse, it was cold and very windy. But, for the final event on the afternoon of March 1, the weather was a mild and not too bright.

There were over 100 people in attendance and 10 people were available, wearing gold sashes, to demonstrate the latest Augmented Reality applications on mobile devices. Sometimes it was difficult to see much on the small mobile device screen, but people were patient and waited their turns to see the demos.

Thank you to Gbanga’s Matthias Sala for organizing the field trips as well as showing many mobile AR game applications, to Sibylle Peuker and Martin Feuz for showing the overview of three or four popular applications and browsers (including Layar, Wikitude, Junaio and AcrossAir), to Gilad Geron for showing five different outdoor/geo-tourism type of applications on iPhone and Android, to Till Quack, Marc Steffen and Herbert Bay for showing the kooaba visual search (Interactive Print) and the Google Goggles applications and to our out-of-town guests, Peter Meier (CTO of metaio) and Martin Lechner (CTO of Mobilizy) who stayed after the Augmented Reality DevCamp Zurich.

We are glad that Peter and Martin were available during Mobile Monday Switzerland for our members to ask questions and see the demos first hand from the architects of two of the leading platforms for Mobile Social Augmented Reality.

After about an hour and a half of demos, it was beginning to get cold outside. We all moved to the bQm.li just below the Polyterrasse and enjoyed networking in the casual college bistro atmosphere.

Thank you to all who attended and contributed to this great event!

Augmented Reality is one of the hot trends for mobile in 2010.

There are many different aspects to be explored:

• the use of GPS/location-based services,
• the integration of 2D and 3D content,
• choice of AR browsers or to build a stand-alone application,
• the engineering of the algorithms behind the scenes,
• the design of interactivity around “hot” objects and places into a popular user experience,
• the go-to-market strategies and
• much more.

If you want to get up to speed or to share with others what you are doing on topics related to Augmented Reality, a special event dedicated to the many facets of Augmented Reality is being planned for you! It is being organized separately from MoMo by some of the Mobile Monday Switzerland committee and, like Mobile Monday Switzerland events, it will deliver highly interactive and high quality content.

AR DevCamp Zurich

When: March 1, 2010 9h00-16h00
Where: the IBM Innovation Center Zurich
Format: this is an unconference. Session suggestions can be made any time. The final schedule will be determined on the morning of March 1 based on the interests of participants and the availability of session leaders.
Fee: there is no cost to attend this special event.

To participate, you must register in advance by going to AR DevCamp Registration Form.

We thank IBM developerWorks for hosting the AR DevCamp Zurich. If you wish to associate your company with this event, please contact us for more information.

Immediately following AR DevCamp Zurich, beginning at 16h00, there will be a special Mobile Monday Switzerland Hands-On event. See our programme page for Mobile Monday March 1, 2010 for more information and separate registration.