I’m delighted to report that I’m attending WHITE SPACE next week — it looks to be one of the most interesting events I’ve come across recently.

Should you be there too? It’s taking place next week on Thursday 13th of October in New York. I know the organisers so if you think you should be there, drop me a note and I’ll connect you.

Here’s the event overview:

WHITE SPACE, an exclusive invitation-only summit tailored to influencers and decision makers who help shape the direction of the business of popular culture, will take place on the afternoon of Thursday, October 13 at the Javits Center just hours before the doors open for New York Comic Con 2011. Conceived as a think tank for 100 masters and innovators in the fields of TV, film, comics, games, technology and advertising, WHITE SPACE is not a traditional conference, but is designed to foster open, transparent discussion between industry leaders. It will be kicked off by brief talks from three masters of media followed by small group discussions led by influential moderators.

WHITE SPACE executives will open this year’s event by describing plans for 2012 which call for a continuation of high-level discussion along with exhibits of the technology which is driving so much transformation in the pop culture universe.

That’s the standard blurb, but if you’d like the background, have a read of the background from the point of view of the event’s Chief Dude, Lance Fensterman.

Lance writes:

The basic idea of White Space is to take the big show floor of NYCC with all its fans, brands, games, comics, TV shows, – content in all forms – and flip it upside down and look at everything that goes into the making of the content we all crave. It’s about exploring the business of pop culture across platforms and industries. So we’ll have an interesting mix of folks from gaming, TV, film, publishing, technology, advertising and venture capital to engage a big dialogue about the crazy business of pop culture.

One name I recognise immediately from the speaker list is Matt Mason, author of The Pirate’s Dilemma — I saw him speak at Connected Creativity this year and found his viewpoints for mainstream media hugely compelling. Bring it on. I’m looking forward to his contributions in particular. Here’s the video interview I did with Matt at the event back in April.

If you’re liking the concept, drop me a note and I’ll connect you to the team there. I’m ewan@mobileindustryreview.com.

Now then here’s another event that I’d like to draw your attention to, especially if you’re into social media as I know a lot of the people reading are. BlogWorld & New Media Expo is taking place on the 24th-26th of May  in New York. This year they’re adding a mobile stream to the conference schedule — and all things being equal, I’m going to try and be there!

I asked Rick Calvert, the top man at BlogWorld to answer some questions about the event (particularly in the context of mobile). Here we go — my questions are in bold:

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1. Could you introduce yourself — who are you and what’s your background?

I am the CEO & Co-founder or BlogWorld & New Media Expo. I have been reading blogs since 2000 and started my own political blog “The Real Ugly American” in 2005. Before launching BlogWorld I worked on several large tradeshows here in the US including The SEMA Show (everything you don’t need to make your car go faster or look cooler which brings 100,000 attendees and more than 2,000 exhibitors), ComiCon (everything you ever wanted to know about Comic Books 100,000 attendees and 1,000 exhibitors) and AWFS (Association of WoodWorking & Furnishings Suppliers)

2. Describe BlogWorldExpo — what’s the event concept? It’s not just for people who write blogs?

BlogWorld was built primarily to provide an industry wide gathering and help digital content creators succeed. In order to accomplish that we identified four main goals with our event.

#1 Help content creators learn how to create, distribute and monetize content.
#2 Expose the different communities within the blogosphere to each other.
#3 Educate companies large and small how to use these new media and social networking tools and teach them how to build relationships with content creators.
#4 Foster the convergence between new media and traditional media.

We also have a very diverse community. This includes four main groups:

• Digital content creators who are currently earning some income or a full time living via their blog, podcast, internet radio, internet TV or other form of digital content.
• Other folks that we consider a core part of our community include people who are insanely passionate about their content and want to improve what they are doing but might not be making any money at it or may never even have the aspiration to do so.
• The next group are the corporate bloggers, community managers, social media managers, and evangelists.
• Lastly, come the suits. The PR flacks and “Corporate Communicators”, the CMO’s VP’s and Directors of Marketing, the Ad Agency pitchmen and small business owners who want to engage with our core community and learn how to use new media tools to sell more stuff, provide better customer service and improve their internal corporate communication, etc.

3. I’ve always associated BlogWorldExpo with the West Coast — tell us about the addition of the New York show?

We have wanted to do a show in the east coast for a long time now. People are constantly asking us to produce an event on the east coast. This year we finally had the right opportunity to do that in partnership with our friends at Reed and Book Expo America. This is going to allow people within our community who have always wanted to attend but haven’t been able to travel out west to be a part of the BlogWorld experience.

4. What kind of organisations exhibit and present?

Like the rest of the blogosphere it is a pretty diverse group. Blogging platforms like WordPress and Posterous, to analytics and social media monitoring services like Radian6 and Raven Tools, content syndication services like Newstex, Advertising and Affiliate networks, domain hosting and registration companies, blog networks, audio and video hardware like Kodak and Sony, to corporate sponsors like Ford and Southwest Airlines.

5. Who should attend BlogWorldExpo?

Anyone who wants to create, distribute or monetize content on the web. Any company that wants to learn how to use social networking tools like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn or how to blog and podcast.

6. The event seems to have a phenomenal reach — tell us about that?

Well last year we had 3,200 attendees at the show. In turn those 3,200 people had a combined monthly audience of over 250 million people. That is just counting their self reported blog audience. That doesn’t include their reach on Twitter, Facebook etc. I think the fact that we hold the Guinness World Record for “most social media messages sent in a 24 hour period with a single hashtag” #beatcancer is evidence of that reach and influence.

7. Mobile, blogging and social media are beginning to tightly integrate — and to this end you’ve introduced a mobile stream — tell us about that?

The mobile revolution is going to dwarf the internet revolution. As smart phones get smarter and easier to use and with the increased adoption of tablets like the iPad. Billions of people are all going to be consuming the content that bloggers, podcasters etc create on those mobile devices. They are also going to be making buying decisions and direct purchases from their mobile phones. Any content creator that isn’t formatting their content to be consumed on mobile devices is going to be left behind very quickly.

8. What’s your message to companies in the mobile industry thinking about coming along?

They need content creators as much as we need them. The sooner the mobile experience becomes friendly and easy to use and consumers can access content easily the faster mobile devices will be adopted.

9. Talk us through some highlights — what are you particularly excited about?

Well as I am writing this reply, we just confirmed WordPress.com as are newest exhibitor. We are pretty excited about that. It is the first time they have officially been on the show floor 8). But the co-location with Book Expo America is definitely the highlight of the NYC event. This is the first time an entire segment of the traditional media space is going to be exposed to the new media universe at large. We always attract a few publishers, radio, TV and film industry folks to our event and they attend other social media conferences but never have the two met face to face head on. I think both communities are going to blown away by what they learn from each other. A lot of misconceptions on both sides are going to be confronted and that is going to bring about some great conversations.

10. Where do we find out more information?

That’s easy www.blogworldexpo.com or give us a tweet or a call. Thanks Ewan!

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Thank you Rick — thanks for taking the time and I look forward to physically meeting at BlogWorld soon.

She’s steadfastly refusing to buy an iPhone 3G at the moment. Maybe she will change her mind after a weekend with just her iPod with wifi. You never know.

If you’ve got any mobile related recommendations, let us know. We’ll see if Krystal can take a look.

I was interviewing Mark for the DeviceAnywhere Developer Roadshow we’re doing here at SMS Text News. I tell you, it’s just brilliant. Brilliant. I’m thoroughly enjoying being able to show DeviceAnywhere to top quality developer/entrepreneurs like Mark.

I sat him down and flipped open the DeviceAnywhere Studio (check out the walk-through) and brought up a few devices.

“Awww, look at that!” he said, as I opened up a few handsets, “It’s like having the handset there in your hand!”

Mark went on to explain that he’s spent about 20,000 pounds or more on handsets over the last three years (including contracts). With burgeoning demand for ShopQwik on a whole load of different platforms, testing is a key issue for him — he reckons he’ll be able to get some excellent benefits from using DeviceAnywhere, although I’ll leave the specifics ’til the video.

We’ll have it cut and online next week.

Meantime I’m off now to catch my flight to Dublin for Unlimited Drinks tonight!

Travellers will be able to download their electronic boarding pass from delta.com, and then present it to airport security and later on at the boarding gate where it will be scanned. It looks like Delta’s got big plans for mobile check-in too: “Future enhancements include standby upgrades and same day, round trip check-in on delta.com, mobile and SMS check-in,” the company said.

It all sounds great, but what happens when your phone dies? Do airport staff have an emergency charger to hand?