The Location Business Summit USA, 14-15 September, Crowne Plaza, San Jose

I attended this conference sponsored by TheWhereBusiness. It drew a crowd of about 100 executives from the LBS ecosystem including a great cast of speakers (see the list at http://www.thewherebusiness.com/locationbusinesssummitusa/speakers.shtml)
The focus seemed to be on network-based LBS. Carriers are in the game for sure! Rip Gerber, CEO of network-centric location enabler, LOC-AID Technologies, had a very interesting take on location and tracking. His messages were: LIFE, DEATH and the FUTURE. Network-based location info is breathing new life into LBS, location-based social networking companies will die and eventually evolve into just a handful, and the future is about predicting where people and devices are going. Not sure if I agree with it all but the guy is definitely an interesting speaker.
I think one word all in the conference agreed on was the word “monetization”. Network-based LBS is going to explode and enterprises that figure out how to capitalize on this emerging trend are going to see huge profits. All in all -- very focused and lively conversations which we will most likely see repeated over the next year.