I'm hosting MoMoLondon's next debate: 24th of September, be there!

On the 24th of September I’ll be in full agitating-mode. That is, I’ve been invited to host the HTML5 vs Native debate taking place at Mobile Monday London’s monday night event (“MoMo London”).

I’m hunting for some good panelists so if you have any recommendations, please drop me a note: ewan@mobileindustryreview.com.

Here’s the overview of the topic from the MoMoLondon team:

Web vs Apps, HTML5 vs Native

We see the return of this evergreen topic in our extremely popular annual discussion of HTML5 vs Native on 24th September, kindly supported by the folks over at Keynote DeviceAnywhere. We keep returning to this discussion because to live in mobile is to live in the fast lane! So it’s good to keep up with thinking and the trends that seem to keep changing the picture on an ongoing basis.

At our sell out event, last year, we debated the motion:

“This house believes that apps are the new ringtones and therefore have a limited shelf-life for long-term commercial gain”

and in a highly energetic and amusing debate, you, the community, decided in favour of the motion. Apps are dead, long live Web Apps!

Back then HTML5 was the new kid on the block, offering the promise of “write once run anywhere” and many of us enthusiastically espoused the dawning of a new era. A year and a bit later, how do we all feel about this?

Probably most of us still believe that in some time frame for some classes of application HTML5 does indeed offer the prospect and indeed does already provide a good answer to some clearly scoped and limited application use cases.

But in the light of over a year’s experience, some are saying that it’s not yet lived up to its promise and that although like the proverbial Chinese meal they felt full at the time, their hunger hasn’t been satisfied in the medium term and are sceptical about the long term. Perhaps, like other famous cross-device solutions both its promise and its readiness for market were over-stated. Insufficient specification, incomplete feature readiness, inconsistent order of implementation makes this an engineering bouillabaisse and does not provide the sort of commercial respite we were looking for.

So, reality has crept in, today HTML5 does not provide the ingredients for the kind of Michelin dining experience that is often needed. Instead, if you want a TV dinner, then it provides a Pot Noodles experience for consumption on the couch.

So this year, our motion is:

HTML5, far from being part of Gordon Ramsay’s larder is more likely to be used by Stavros at the corner chippie. Fine if you want chips. Gordon vs. Stavros, you decide!

Chaired by the quirky and opinionated Ewan MacLeod of Mobile Industry Review, and joined by two teams of leading debaters (one fit and healthy, the other fat and unhealthy???) we are looking forward to another lively, and possibly even riotous debate!

Standby for opinion. Oh yes. I thoroughly recommend participation. I’ll have more details on registration shortly but please do mark the date — 24th of September — in your diary.