Happy 2nd birthday Forum Oxford and its mobile applications experts

Its been two years since Ajit Jaokar, Russell Buckley and Peter Holland joined Alan Moore and me to launch Forum Oxford, together with a dozen of the leading bloggers in mobile and another dozen leading authors in mobile.

For me (and Alan) it has been a wonderful microcosm and experiment in social networking. An expert community, evolving, growing, maturing and gaining its own stature and credibility. It is now clearly established as the premier strategy site for the future of mobile telecoms. We have numerous CEO's managing directors, founders, authors, bloggers and countless strategy directors of the mobile industry, as well as many of the thought leaders from the related and converging industries as well.

So in two years its already 1,589 members strong from 75 countries. While free and fully sponsored by Oxford University (and thus UK centered) this global community already has over 62% of its membership from outside Britain with large delegations from the USA, India, Germany and Finland, and many members from all six inhabited continents.

But more impressive than the membership, is the amount of active discussion. We have already generated 1,276 topics and have 7,831 comments. Forum Oxford averages 16 new topics every week and 14 new comments every single day. The average comment thread for the past year has over 6 comments, so we get very lively debate and discussion about the future of mobile and convergence.

Just about all of our friends who comment here at our blog or who we mention in our stories also are active at Forum Oxford. For me it has become my most valuable early warning radar of what is happening in mobile, and as a consultant, this insight into what other experts are talking and thinking about is priceless. And I have made countless new friends and generated a lot of business already directly from contacts at Forum Oxford. It has been an honour to moderate the discussions with Ajit and Peter.

So for any of our readership who has an active interest in mobile (the seventh mass media after all, ha-ha) please do join us. The website is  www.forumoxford.com  and for your first time sign-up you will need an enrollment key, for which you can use the word "forumoxford". I hope to see you there, and please post comments and join the discussions.

Congratulations Forum Oxford.